Idea for evolutionary advantage of pubic hair

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So back to the topic at hand...

The"running human" idea has several obvious flaws, the first of which is that modern hunter-gatherers who chase down their prey over long distances are likely a result of the absence of large predators, long since hunted to extinction or otherwise extinct in the Americas, and thinly spread in other parts of the world. Yes, humans can outperform a variety of animals over long distances, but that is only relevant if you survive the short distance. Early humans had to be able to not only catch what they were hunting, but also avoid being caught.

The heat dissipation idea also has to somehow be reconciled with the long history of human beings living in temperate or cold climates, especially given that much of the past 100,000 years was a glacial period, as opposed to the warmer interglacial period that started about 10,000 years ago.

Also, the cat whisker's comparison is weak, in my view, since cat's whiskers are used for navigation in the dark. Whiskers tend to be slightly wider than the cat itself, and so serve as a good proxy for where the cat can and can't fit when light is insufficient to reveal that. the whiskers are also highly sensitive to minute air currents, say some, helping the cat hunt more effectively.

The survival of genital hair could be accounted for in part as a way to protect an otherwise vital and sensitive area from parasites or other small nasties.

Human skin exposure to the sun is responsible for a significant portion of our Vitamin D production. If you where completely covered in hair, you simply wouldn't have had enough Vit D. By the time people had begun to use significan amounts of clothing, they had learned ways to supplement thier diets with other sources of Vit D.

Not hardcore fact, but a strong hypothesis within some scientific circles.

~NS

I read somewhere (though it wasn't from a reliable source) that pubic hair exists to block out infectious bacteria and prevent disease.

Its Nature's way of keeping the crotch warm

ruveyn

some people's facial hair looks like a pubic bush to me.
like they are d*ck heads almost.

I think we can agree that the question is - not why do we HAVE pubic hair.

Its why did we loose the rest of our fur, and retain pubic hair.

The heat dissappation idea seems plausible to me for why we lost fur.
(except why do we have hairy armpits- hair AND sweat glands in the same spot?).
( Do chimps pant? Or do they sweat? someone look that up)

Pubic hair probably functions simply as packing material to cushion our sensitive genitilia. Not to SENSE danger from bugs, but to cushion against blunt blows.

Facial hair is a different matter. The male beard was probably a signal of dominance- the equivalent of a Mane in a male lion. Indeed we probably got beards because we lost our prominent male canine teeth sported by male baboons, chimps, and Gorillas.

masterdief is right.

We DONT have a long history outside of Africa and the tropics.

We became human (sweatglands and all) in africa.

Further-by the time we invaded the Eurasian landmass beyond africa not only were we fully human but by then we had invented fire, and clothing, and no longer needed to evolve body traits to adapt to any kind of environment cold or otherwise.