* . *
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact
Sunday, June 1, 2025
Earth-News
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    Jackie Chan Reveals This Family Member ‘Never Watched’ The Whole Of Any Of His Movies – Yahoo

    Jackie Chan Reveals This Family Member ‘Never Watched’ The Whole Of Any Of His Movies – Yahoo

    Mavs CEO holds firm on new arena, entertainment district in Dallas – Dallas News

    Mavs CEO Stands Strong on Vision for New Arena and Entertainment District in Dallas

    Entertainment: On Your Marks, Get Set, Beer Run! – Urban Milwaukee

    Get Ready to Race: The Ultimate Beer Run Experience Awaits!

    Rachel Guttman Launches Entertainment Law Firm Gutt Law, PLLC [Exclusive] – MusicRow.com

    Rachel Guttman Unveils Exciting New Entertainment Law Firm: Gutt Law, PLLC!

    HYBE Cashes In: Offloads Final Stake in K-Pop Rival SM Entertainment for $177 Million!

    Allied Gaming & Entertainment Receives Expected Nasdaq Notice Regarding Delayed Quarterly Report – Business Wire

    Allied Gaming & Entertainment Faces Nasdaq Notice Over Delayed Quarterly Report

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    Lafayette Regional Technology Council – Tech Leadership That’s Homegrown and Future-Focused – Discover Lafayette

    Lafayette Regional Technology Council – Tech Leadership That’s Homegrown and Future-Focused – Discover Lafayette

    Drone technology demo in Cambria County showcases future of lifesaving medical deliveries – local21news.com

    Revolutionizing Healthcare: Drone Technology Takes Flight for Lifesaving Medical Deliveries in Cambria County

    Revolutionary Harvesting Technology Promises to Slash CAR-T Manufacturing Costs!

    Stop the Machines: The Rise of Anti-Technology Extremism – International Centre for Counter-Terrorism – ICCT

    Unplugged: The Surge of Anti-Technology Extremism

    Finland to head EU’s quantum defense technology project – Latest news from Azerbaijan

    Finland Takes the Lead in Pioneering EU’s Quantum Defense Technology Initiative!

    i3D Robotics Unveils Breakthrough Glass Defect Detection Technology – USGlass Magazine

    Revolutionary Glass Defect Detection Technology Unveiled by i3D Robotics!

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    Jackie Chan Reveals This Family Member ‘Never Watched’ The Whole Of Any Of His Movies – Yahoo

    Jackie Chan Reveals This Family Member ‘Never Watched’ The Whole Of Any Of His Movies – Yahoo

    Mavs CEO holds firm on new arena, entertainment district in Dallas – Dallas News

    Mavs CEO Stands Strong on Vision for New Arena and Entertainment District in Dallas

    Entertainment: On Your Marks, Get Set, Beer Run! – Urban Milwaukee

    Get Ready to Race: The Ultimate Beer Run Experience Awaits!

    Rachel Guttman Launches Entertainment Law Firm Gutt Law, PLLC [Exclusive] – MusicRow.com

    Rachel Guttman Unveils Exciting New Entertainment Law Firm: Gutt Law, PLLC!

    HYBE Cashes In: Offloads Final Stake in K-Pop Rival SM Entertainment for $177 Million!

    Allied Gaming & Entertainment Receives Expected Nasdaq Notice Regarding Delayed Quarterly Report – Business Wire

    Allied Gaming & Entertainment Faces Nasdaq Notice Over Delayed Quarterly Report

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    Lafayette Regional Technology Council – Tech Leadership That’s Homegrown and Future-Focused – Discover Lafayette

    Lafayette Regional Technology Council – Tech Leadership That’s Homegrown and Future-Focused – Discover Lafayette

    Drone technology demo in Cambria County showcases future of lifesaving medical deliveries – local21news.com

    Revolutionizing Healthcare: Drone Technology Takes Flight for Lifesaving Medical Deliveries in Cambria County

    Revolutionary Harvesting Technology Promises to Slash CAR-T Manufacturing Costs!

    Stop the Machines: The Rise of Anti-Technology Extremism – International Centre for Counter-Terrorism – ICCT

    Unplugged: The Surge of Anti-Technology Extremism

    Finland to head EU’s quantum defense technology project – Latest news from Azerbaijan

    Finland Takes the Lead in Pioneering EU’s Quantum Defense Technology Initiative!

    i3D Robotics Unveils Breakthrough Glass Defect Detection Technology – USGlass Magazine

    Revolutionary Glass Defect Detection Technology Unveiled by i3D Robotics!

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
Earth-News
No Result
View All Result
Home Science

Why curly hair was an evolutionary advantage

June 21, 2023
in Science
Why curly hair was an evolutionary advantage
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Science

Curls may be why humans have such big brains. A new study—involving a mannequin wearing wigs in a wind tunnel—reveals how.

ByTom Metcalfe

Published June 20, 2023

• 6 min read

The curls on your head may have originally served as an evolutionary advantage for growing bigger human brains, according to new research that involved studying a bewigged mannequin in a climate-controlled wind tunnel.

“The brain is a large and very heat-sensitive organ that also generates a lot of heat,” explains Tina Lasisi, currently a postdoctoral researcher in biological anthropology at Pennsylvania State University. “So we figured, evolutionarily, this could be important—especially in a period of time when we see the brain size of our species growing.”

Tightly curled hair better protects the scalp from solar radiation, the new research shows, and it doesn’t lie flat against the skin while wet—a boon in hot conditions that can make humans sweat, like those encountered by our hominin ancestors in Africa millions of years ago.

‘Sweating isn’t free’

A research article by Lasisi and her Penn State colleagues, published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, describes their measurements of how hair regulates scalp temperature in direct sunlight, using different wigs on a “thermal mannequin.”

The mannequin, heated to the average body temperature of 95 degrees Fahrenheit, was placed in a climate-controlled chamber within a wind tunnel that enabled scientists to study the amount of heat transferred between its skin and the surrounding environment.

Three wigs were made from black human hair sourced from China—one straight, one moderately curly, and one tightly curled—so that the researchers could observe how different hair textures affected heat gain and loss on the scalp. They also calculated heat loss at different windspeeds, after wetting the wigs to simulate sweating.

The researchers then made a model of heat loss under different conditions and studied it under the typical conditions in equatorial Africa where early hominins are thought to have evolved.

They learned that all types of hair gave some protection from the sun, but tightly curled hair gave the best protection and minimized the need to sweat—a significant finding, says Lasisi.

“Scalp hair is… a possible passive mechanism that saves us from the physiological cost of sweating,” she says. “Sweating isn’t free—you’re losing water and electrolytes. And for our hominin ancestors that could have been important.”

The mystery of human hair

Just why humans have hair on their heads is a long-standing question that few scientists agree on.

Many link it to our evolution from four-legged creatures to those that walk upright, reasoning that head hair helped regulate the body’s temperature by acting as a barrier to the equatorial sun.

Niccolo Caldararo, an anthropologist at San Francisco State University who wasn’t involved in the latest study, favors evolutionary anthropologist Dean Falk’s “radiator theory” : that hair protects large hominin brains in hot sunlight and insulates them when it’s cold.

But Caldararo notes it’s a complex subject with many variables: for example, white hair that reflects light might be better protection from the sun than black hair that absorbs its heat, he says.

The research by Lasisi and her colleagues is “provocative,” says Kurt Stenn, a dermatologist not involved with the study and the author of Hair: A Human History. He suggests that the researchers should have also considered the shape and density of human head hair.

For example, the Asian hair used in the study tends to be round in cross-section and therefore absorbs more heat than some types of African hair, where each hair is shaped like a long ribbon that curls more easily, he says.

Evolutionary biologist Elizabeth Tapanes at the University of California San Diego, who also wasn’t involved in the study, says the research is “a great leap forward about thinking why we have so much hair on our heads.”

She adds that studying the hair of other primates alongside human hair could help scientist better understand how it keeps the head cool; her own studies of lemurs called sifakas have found similar results.

Sifakas are vertical climbers and leapers, so they are usually upright with their heads facing the sun, Tapanes says; and the researchers found they had more scalp hair and less body hair in hot and humid environments.

An evolutionary advantage?

It’s even possible that curly hair might be one of the reasons why Homo sapiens supplanted the Neanderthal and Denisovan species of hominins, which died out about 40,000 years ago.

Lasisi points out that if the genetic mutations for curly hair occurred before Homo sapiens left Africa, but after our hominin ancestors did, it might have given early modern humans an evolutionary advantage.

But she doesn’t think that’s likely; and the study proposes instead that genes for curly hair arose much earlier in human evolution, perhaps around two million years ago when Homo erectus was the dominant hominin. And as hominin brains grew bigger, it suggests, the genes for curly hair that protected the scalp from the sun may have given those who had them an advantage.

As for straight hair: Lasisi says any genetic predisposition for curly hair among early hominins was probably variable. “We don’t expect that it would have been homogenous,” she says. At a later point in our evolution, curly hair may have lost its evolutionary advantage, and straight hair may have been favored by different types of genetic selection.

“Maybe once we had those larger brains, we also had all these cultural adaptations to avoid overheating, like better sources of water,” she says. “And at that point, maybe there wasn’t such a selective pressure for curly hair.”

Lasisi says the next stages of the research will be to look for genetic evidence that may support the theory.

“First, we’ll have to know more about modern humans, such as which genes are associated the hair morphology,” she says. “And the second step will be to collaborate with people who do ancient DNA work, to see if those are seen in archaic humans.”

>>> Read full article>>>
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source : National Geographic – https://www.nationalgeographic.com/premium/article/curly-hair-evolutionary-advantage-brain-protect

Tags: curlyevolutionaryscience
Previous Post

6 urgent questions on the missing Titanic submersible

Next Post

How to protect yourself from ticks—and what to do if you’re bitten

Upgrades coming to ecological park in Sunbury – WNEP

Upgrades coming to ecological park in Sunbury – WNEP

June 1, 2025
This will ‘devastate scientific research’: 16 states sue the Trump administration over National Science Foundation directive – CNN

This will ‘devastate scientific research’: 16 states sue the Trump administration over National Science Foundation directive – CNN

June 1, 2025
Trump’s new ‘gold standard’ rule will destroy American science as we know it | Colette Delawalla – The Guardian

Trump’s Controversial ‘Gold Standard’ Rule: A Threat to the Future of American Science

June 1, 2025
The month of pride – financialexpress.com

Celebrating Pride: A Month of Love, Acceptance, and Empowerment

June 1, 2025
Elon Musk: Five ways world’s richest man changed the White House – BBC

Elon Musk’s Impact: Five Transformative Ways the World’s Richest Man Influenced the White House

June 1, 2025
Last Week at Economy Class and Beyond (31st May) – Economy Class & Beyond –

Last Week at Economy Class and Beyond (31st May) – Economy Class & Beyond –

June 1, 2025
Jackie Chan Reveals This Family Member ‘Never Watched’ The Whole Of Any Of His Movies – Yahoo

Jackie Chan Reveals This Family Member ‘Never Watched’ The Whole Of Any Of His Movies – Yahoo

June 1, 2025
Governor Newsom proclaims Mental Health Awareness Month – Governor of California (.gov)

Governor Newsom Declares May as Mental Health Awareness Month!

June 1, 2025
Sanders says Harris fell short with working class. He has a plan to fix that. – The Washington Post

Sanders says Harris fell short with working class. He has a plan to fix that. – The Washington Post

June 1, 2025
Lafayette Regional Technology Council – Tech Leadership That’s Homegrown and Future-Focused – Discover Lafayette

Lafayette Regional Technology Council – Tech Leadership That’s Homegrown and Future-Focused – Discover Lafayette

June 1, 2025

Categories

Archives

June 2025
MTWTFSS
 1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
30 
« May    
Earth-News.info

The Earth News is an independent English-language daily published Website from all around the World News

Browse by Category

  • Business (20,132)
  • Ecology (655)
  • Economy (670)
  • Entertainment (21,576)
  • General (15,254)
  • Health (9,712)
  • Lifestyle (672)
  • News (22,149)
  • People (671)
  • Politics (678)
  • Science (15,891)
  • Sports (21,174)
  • Technology (15,657)
  • World (658)

Recent News

Upgrades coming to ecological park in Sunbury – WNEP

Upgrades coming to ecological park in Sunbury – WNEP

June 1, 2025
This will ‘devastate scientific research’: 16 states sue the Trump administration over National Science Foundation directive – CNN

This will ‘devastate scientific research’: 16 states sue the Trump administration over National Science Foundation directive – CNN

June 1, 2025
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

Go to mobile version