the evolution of clothes?

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Strawman. Now you are adding fur AND blocking air passage.

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Because that is what fur does/ It traps air and thus insulates the body.

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Neither of which are predicated by clothes. In fact at the last Olympics they were introducing full body tracksuits ... in Greece, hot humid Greece. Refuted.

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Thats just silly - evolving animals don't have access to sophisticated breathing fabrics. [quote] You can loose 80% of your body heat through your head even with it covered by hair, sorry, your argument does not hold up here either. In fact one of the arguments for a large brain is that it makes the head operate as a better radiator for heat.[/qupte]Er it does I'm afraid - bald men lose heat faster. Bald men suffer from sun-stroke more easily. Your rebuttal is rebutted. Furthermore, it is senseless to say that the brain makes the head operate as a better heat radiator - the brain accounts for a third of our energy budget and is a major cause of heat generation. So IF you had a heat raditation problem, a big empty space would be much better than one packed solid with high-energy machinery.

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You also have the problem of the sweatiest parts of the body still being endowed with thick hair: pits and pubics. And as pits are already in the shade you cannot play the shade card here.

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Correct. Fortunately Desmond Morris swings in to my rescue, arguing that these places are still hairy in order to trap pheremones in sweat.

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Actually it hasn’t really been properly addressed at all, because you and jar both assume a totally new mutation is necessary rather than selection among existing, naturally occuring trait variations common to all life forms (as I have previously mentioned ).

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I have absolutely never made this claim.

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Now this sounds like a chicken and egg problem if not a causal logical fallacy. One could argue that long distance running then evolved with long-legged bi-pedalism prior to hair loss, that hair loss is not necessary for the trait and it is incidental rather than required.

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You are over-extending my argument as you have done previously. Id did not say REQUIRED. ALL I argued was that the model of the running ape makes sense to me, MORE SO than the idea that hair loss is related to clothing. If I were to stoop to your pathetic reasoning I would challenge that proposition that saying that since elephants do not have clothes its obviously false. Yes?

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You might have more of a point if there were areas NOT covered by hair (however fine). Fine hair is nothing more than an extreme end variation precisely similar to the extreme tails of peacocks and scissortail flycatchers, which are, incidentally, also the result of sexual selection of preferred natural variation within existing traits.

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Wouldn't you say that baleen is a pretty extreme variation on the theme of hair? Again your argument is pathetically limited.

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One major problem with your theory is that hair fineness is more extreme in females than in males, extending further over the body with finer hair on average, and being particularly fine in the breast "sexual signal area" in females compared to males. This would argue that the selected trait is in the female sex and the expression of it in males is secondary.

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To which I respond that Gelada baboons have a signal very much like that but nevertheless display dense body hair in most places. So this fails to answer the question as to why it has spread over the body in humans or what utility this may bring.

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As have victorian thinkers for generations. That won’t stop it from being true.

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What an absurd non sequitur. Sexual selection appears to be a get-out-of-explaining-free card in actual use; what it does not explain is WHY a trait is being selected sexually. As a result it merely frustrates rather than illuminates, in my experience. To date the sole value I have seen in "sexual selection" is describing how counterproductive strategies like the peacocks feathers can become embedded, but its use as a general answer is meaningless. As it is in this case - 'sexual selection' being used as a substitute for thought and analysis.This message has been edited by contracycle, 01-19-2005 05:14 AM

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That is exactly what {fur\hair} is, complete with high-tech wicking technology.[/qupte]

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Except they, unlike us, don't get to choose what they wear. Thus I return to my original offer: next NY marathon, I'll bet on a runner in trunks, and you can prove your point by betting on a runner in a gorilla suit. The fact remains that having the WRONG TYPE of "fabric" for a given environment limits your operational envelope.

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Sorry those are contradictory. Sunstroke is due to excessive build up of heat.

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Correct except: you are much more prone to it if your head is not covered, despite the capacity dissipate heat through the head. The REASON the head CAN radiate heat effectively is exactly the same reason that it can take heat in easily: a large number of blood vessels lying close to the surface. Thus the temeperature of the blood in these vessels is much more affected by external conditions than blood in the abdominal cavity. And thus the need for a head-top covering in humans.

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A large brain is not necessarily a more complex one.

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Sure, but it still requires an energy budget that generates heat. Any increase in the capacity for heat disspiation created by increasing the surface area of the head will be offset by the head generated by the increased mass.

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Pheromones that the human nose is basically incapable of sensing and that we have much lower response to compared to other species? When we have much higher visual response than olfactory? Have you even heard of smell porn?

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None of which are particularly relevant - are you asserting that we CANNOT detect pheremones at all and that they are now totally redundant? Thats going to be a hard case to make. See boilded sentence below:

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So where is it that these pheromones come from anyway?

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The most likely answer is our apocrine glands. The three types of glands that are present in humans are sebaceous glands, sweat glands and apocrine glands. Sebaceous glands exist around the body’s openings and secrete substances that kill potentially dangerous microorganisms. Sweat glands help regulate our body temperature and release water and salt. Apocrine glands in humans do not regulate body temperature as they do in other animals. They are found in large concentrations on the face, chest and wherever body hair exists. Interestingly, apocrine glands become functional after puberty which is when we would most likely be searching for a mate. In other animals apocrine glands are known to release substances which effect sexual behavior, so it seems likely that if human pheromones do exist this is where they would come from (Furlow 1996).

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http://www.macalester.edu/...hap/UBNRP/Smell/attraction.html

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But the point still has NOT been addressed about selection of naturally occuring variation. It happens all the time in species across the board. OR do you deny that some people are much ‘hairier’ than others? AND that they are not considered sex stars (certainly not the women anyway, and certainly not in ‘beefcake’)

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Actually just the other day I read an article to the effect that absent other criteria, men rate long-haired women as sexier than short-haired women. I suspect that male-pattern baldness is not an unconnected phenomenon, as this would reduce the sexiness of older men, reduce pheremone trapping by them, and open an opportunity space for younger men.

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I';m not sure what the relevance of "naturally occurring variation" might be. I've never heard of any adaptation appearing en bloc in a whole population without any variation. Please expand.

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They do. They wear mud and clay, intentionally layered on.

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That... is at best dubious. Elephants are smart enough that they MIGHT be doing it intentionally, but rhinos also role in mud for the same reason - it cools them off. Not because it stays on afterward, to the best of my knowledge. This observation I think supports the contention that in big savannah animals heat dissipation is a big problem tackled by multiple strategies.

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But my point is not loss due to clothes so much as loss due to sexual selection, but that there are likely a number of factors that contributed to it showing up. It shows the features of sexually selected characteristics.

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Well I am not able to discern the features of a sexually selected modification from one selected by other means, so feel free to expand.

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Selected due to better filtering of food? My moustache does that too.

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Er, yes. Which pretty much dmeonstrates that hair can be adapted to many things, which supports the connection that in the case of humans it might be the running ape model that is responsible.

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What I notice is that my pathetically limited argument is once again dismissed instead of addressed.

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Yes. All I had to do to counter that argument was that hair can show signs of being adaopated by non-sexual pressures. That is all. And I did.

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Do you deny that sexual selection exists? Do you deny that it can and does result in extra-ordinary features? Do you deny that humans have extra-ordinary features?

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By what standard is "extraordinary" judged? My default response would be "no" to that. I don;t deny the
And you also have to compare the continuous sexual state of humans compared to the baboons. That would make the signal area more permanent and likely selected for amount of uncoverage compared to coverage.

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An easy counter-argument here is that strong outlines are better prompts than weak ones, so a strong fur/skin border may well work better for signal strength.

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Again, this is your opinion and you are welcome to it. I think your denial is blinding you, but that is my opinion. The why is easy: specimen A is sexy specimen B is not, I’ll have sex with specimen A.

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WHY is specimen A sexy? What ABOUT specimen A is sexy?"Sexual selection" is a non-answer. But it is the strength of my answer - Specimen A is sexy BECAUSE they look better adapted to running, they have long thighs, smooth calves, well-formed feet, a tight arse (sexual interest in the buttocks of course being present in both men and women). Specimen B over there is squat, hairy, with a flabby arse.Selection FOR running VIA sex is a meaningful statement. "Sexual selection" alone is not.

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Gee that results in children looking more like specimen A than specimen B: who woodathunk?

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Everyone.

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All you need to do is look at how sex is used to sell everything to see what a factor it is in human life.

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Indeed - and one of Desmond Morris's depictions was of an advert for coke or similar showing a girl with legs that were one and half times her body length. In other words, grossly disproportionate; and yet it takes someone mentioning this to see it. It is precisely becuase we are so interested in legs et al that IMO reinforces the running ape view.To deny that it has contributed to the way we look, think, sing, dance, and choose mates is, IMAO, incredibly clothed minded

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You know this is absurd for several reasons having nothing to do with this argument. For this to be a test you would have to control for all these other factors: weight, abrasion, rigidity, inertia, etcetera etcetera. As I said before this is a strawman argument and it is bogus. Your continued use of it is bad form. I have already demonstrated that it does not represent this issue in the slightest.

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It most certainly DOES represent the issue; stop playing games. The argument is that hairlessness contributes to long distance running efficiency. You appear to dispute this - therefore from your perspective having long hair and heavy coat should not be any impediment. If you really insisted on ruling out all other influneces, it would be easy enough to do - just have the same runner do it on different occassions.Regardless, it remains the fact that dogs are now banned on the Comrades marathon because they tend to die of heatstroke, and humans do not. Humans are more efficient runners over distance than dogs. Some would argue, even more efficient than antelope and horses, under the right conditions. And that is a very special UNIQUE effect which IMO requires an explanation.

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You really like arguing in circles don’t you. You contradict yourself again. So increasing the head size does increase the radiator effect, but hair on the head to keep from getting sunstroke insulates the overheating increased mass of the brain causing even more heat buildup ... dizzy yet?

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You need a basic physics refresher. You are looking at a feedback system, there is nothing weird about it. I have already referenced the problems of proportional surface area to volume - this is standard high school stuff. Increasing VOLUME does NOT increase heat dissipation, it makes it worse. Increasing AREA improves dissipation. But a heat exchanger can work both ways, and so if exposed to the sun can be detrimental. And that is what head-top hair addresses.

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Yeah, that’s a rebutal ... if they exist ... it’s been almost 10 years since that was published: any found yet? (color is my emphasis in the article).

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Fine - but then again, this demonstrates that there is indeed a *possible* explanation for armpit anfd genital hair. Their presence does not imply there is something automatically and inherently wrong with the running ape model.

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What is this but another in a list of extra-ordinary (NOT extraordinary — the - is there for a purpose) features that are selected for sexual attraction? Long tails? Long hair: what purpose does long hair serve?

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I don't dispute this point, I just don;t understand what significance you think it has.

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Gosh. This is not a difficult concept. ... There are mouse species that are bred to reduce variation so that they can control for this aspect in experiments.

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Trivia snipped. I know what this variation IS, what I asked about was its RELEVANCE to this argument. Care to answer the question yet?

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Then you are not paying attention. Sexually selected features are those that help you get mates and do not have any survival benefit, in fact they may carry a survival burden.

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Fair enough. This seems to rule out hairlessness as sexually selected.

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Features like very fine hair that has {no or very small} survival benefit. We will come back to this later.

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Well, now I really do not understand the point of this diversion because my whole argument is that it is NOT trivial, but fundamental to our aboriginal mode of production.

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False logic again. The kiwi bird has adapted to living with feathers that are more like fur than normal feathers, and this means that the peacock tail cannot be developed by sexual selection? Want to try again? This time on the issue?

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Perfect logic, you are switching your terms. Your implied that hair is NEVER selected for functional reasons, which I disproved. Nowhere did I claim that sexual selection does not happen, nor that it never affects feathers or fur. Please pay attention.

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Certainly humans are not normal looking apes for a number of reasons, not least of which is the super fineness of body hair, particularly in the sexual signal breast areas as previously mentioned (and buttocks too, seeing as you seem to like them ).

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Yes - we are NOT normal looking apes. Might that perhaps be BECAUSE WE ARE A PLAINS APE AND THEY ARE FOREST APES? The way we differ from say gorillas is not massively different IMO from the way an Arabian thoroughbred differs from a donkey: longer limbed, sleeker, smoother.Your apparent insistence that the ONLY viable explanation for these characteristics is runaway non-productive sexual selection is just ridiculous. There are other explanations that are suitable for consideration, of which the Running Ape model IMO is the best.

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Yes, and this is why the porn stars are shaved of any body hair, to augment those borders ... care to try again and address the issue instead of throwing out more wild ideas?

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Yes my idea was obviously ridiculous - that must be why kohl, which draws stronger borders, is the oldest of cosmetics.Frankly thats a pretty desperate reach - I imagine porn performers do so so as not to obstruct the view. Try logic - its the real thing.

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By your argument, marathon runners should be the sexiest humans .... erm, not to me ... okay try it this way: by your argument all porn stars should look like marathon runners .... darn that doesn’t work either ... I know let’s try: by your argument all porn stars should look extremely fit ... well some do, but many don’t, gosh this just isn’t working!

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LOOOOOL - I remind you of your own argument about "natural variation". There is no reason to expect that the general case necessarily applies to any specific case. You should try dialectical materialism, it helps you cut through this silliness.

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Your picture implies a level of consciousness, of rationality to it that just does not happen. A man doesn’t ask why his penis is erect ..... he just goes in the direction it is pointing

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Actually what it implies is a very sophisticated degree of UNconsious recognition. Exactly the same kind of thing I previously addressed in the symmetry topic - it is an unconscious recognition of the breakdown of symmetry that *implies* something about the fitness of the person, and which is then fed into our cognitive space as "ugly".This actually shows a major weakness in evolutionary psychology, which we touched on the other day. I'm adamant that no psychology can procede without a comprehensive understanding of information science.

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Rock stars (with the ‘wild’ behavior on stage) have groupies, marathon runners don’t.

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Hmm, your desperation is confirmed. Rock Stars, with their fame, attention, and wealth, are clear alpha male types, or at least that is the projected image. But if you recall the spandex era, you would have seen a great deal of male leg on display.Of course marathon runners do not command the same social rank, and hence do not have groupies. Sports stars also get groupies - and especially in terms of soccer football, that is very much a foot/leg/running skill.

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To do this, imha, means that you need to study porn, the industry founded on nothing else but catering to that attraction. They don’t show marathons ... not running ones anyway ...

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Yes, well - at this point I think your argument has been pretty much destroyed. The observed phenomenon accord more with a functional achievement than not. Perhaps you should get your nose out of the wankmags and do some research.This message has been edited by contracycle, 01-20-2005 07:24 AM

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Let's also not cloud the issue by pointing out that upright walking occure ~4.5+ million years ago while Ardipithecus ramidus lived in a wooded environment

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I suppose you are indicating something like this:

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One aspect that is particularly important about this species is the environment in which it was found. Unlike the open savanna that was hypothesized in many theories of hominid origins, the material was found in strata with preserved fossil woods and seeds as well as a predominance of colobine monkeys in the faunal remains. Also, savanna-associated megafauna are rare, indicating that this species lived in a wooded environment. This is important because this species was fully bipedal; the particulars of which will be discussed in a later section.

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I'm not sure how you think this supports your point. Nowehere have I claimed that bipedalism and hairlessness occurred simultaneously. I would expect that running as a mode would pre-date refinements and improvments in running, such as hair loss. Bipedalism may well have appeared in forested environments - I've seen footage of chimps wading upright through streams, for example - but this does not preclude hairlessness from having developed in a later savannah environment.

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What it supports is that upright posture evolved before the savannah ecosystem was involved. Now let us remember that the savannah was seen as the reason for standing, and this has been refuted.

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was it now? I'm in the camp tyhat sees upright posture as pretty unremarkable in brachiating animals and as developed for tool use.

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It would be interesting to see just how significant your factor is. My argument (to refresh your memory again) is that it is relatively minor as things go in the selection of bareness, that other factors are also likely to be involved and that a major one is sexual selection.

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Yes, so you claim. Unfortuntaley this leaves us with no explanation at all for humans remarkable running abilities - able to outdistance almost everything in the long haul. This is fundamenatally why a sexual selewction hypothesis is much weaker - it proposes that these unique and dramatic features occur by accident rather than adaptation. If thats the case then what features cannot be reduced to sexual selection, and what does sexual selection mean? Nothing.

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And the same holds for the body. You are saying {X} works on the head area and {notX} works on the rest of the body. Explain again how this is logical?

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Now you're playing dumb. I have already explained the physics to you.
X works on the head becuase it is where most of the suns energy will be felt most consistently, and becuase we do NOT want the big blood vessels in the head to be more heated; we want them to output hit. Hence, shielding.This cannot be inexplicable to you as you pretend, otherwise thick soles would also appear you if seen on the feet. Afteer all, if normal skin is good enough for the main body, surely it shoyuld be good enough for the soles too. Right? Stop playing silly buggers.

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So you agree that the point I raised {{ You also have the problem of the sweatiest parts of the body still being endowed with thick hair: pits and pubics. And as pits are already in the shade you cannot play the shade card here.}} is valid as a challenge to your hypothesis and that you have not refuted it?

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Unfortunately for you I have refuted it. Your argument is that if the running ape thesis is valid at all, tyhere should be no exceptions to hair loss anywhare. This is manifestly ridiculous, an extension to an illogical extreme. And all I have to do is provide one plausible reason why patches of hair may be retained to destroy your overextension. Which I have done.

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It is obvious, to me anyway: Long hair demonstrates that run-away sexual selection has occurred in humans. It is that simple. But it is not the only feature that is like this, there are quite a number of them. More on this later.

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Ahahaha. So now your argument is reduced to claiming that because there has been SOME sexual selction, there CANNOT be any other adaptations? Illogical.

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But you have yet to demonstrate that this is reasonable in any way for it to be that fundamental. You have no other examples at all where this also holds true, and the pattern of human bareness is not consistent with the hypothesis, either in where on the human body hair remains or in the sexual dimorphism of this feature versus {ability/roles}. Men run faster than women, men are bigger than women, and men are hairier than women. It doesn’t add up.

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Nonsens. Humans are DEMONTRABLY better long distance runners than many or even most animals. The pattern of hair retention fits my model perfectly, especially the retention of head hair, which my model predicts. Any notional sexual dimorphism issue can easily be addressed by positing that remnants of hair remain as armour - thus, on males, we quite spectacularly have our necks still shielded by a matte of hair, and we do NOT lose this in old age.Men may run FASTER than women but I never argued about speed, only DISTANCE. Males have all the usual combat features - bigger frame, more muscular, more armoured. But in our case our quite small degree of dimorphism may arise precisely becuase these features cause necessary compromises with the major adaptation - running.

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Now explain the relevance of whale baleen to the specific selection of fine hair within the human species again please?

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If tyou like I shall repeat myself: to demonstrate that your assertion that hair is only ever modifvied by sexual selection is false. Done and dusted.

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And yet arabian horses do not have less hair or finer hair than those donkeys do they? Again there is a complete absence of the trend you claim to be fundamental in other species.

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Umm, yes I believe there is. But if you need a more extreme variation, look at steppe ponys adapted for cold envrionments - thick bushy hair. I am pointing to a fundemanetal feature of temperature regulation that is addressed in all animals in all environments. Lowland cows are less hairy than highland cows. Plains dogs are less heavily coated than sub-arctic dogs. This is hardly some sort of obscure and unreasonable suggestion.

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Fitness for breeding. It still comes down to sexual arousal. The problem with a very sophisticated degree of UNconsious recognition is the same as the problem with intelligent design — there is no mechanism for it to operate and no evidence of it operating, and now you are talking about specimen {B} being ugly ... LOL. Nor can your very sophisticated degree of UNconsious recognition differentiate between recognition of sexual feedback mechanisms and recognition of running ability.

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Hahahah.... OK then, I'm going to enjoy this: would you like to explain how sexual fitness os recognised? I'm all ears. This is a guenuine question - human cognition is quite fascinating. My explanation shows how and why a feature might be perceived as attractive; according to your argumentm, there is no way to determine what is attractive from what is not, is there. Take it away. [quote] My desperation? LOL. No the display of male leg and bare chest and other aspects is exactly what I was referring to here.[/qupte]Umm, no you were not - ebcuase you can't explain why they are sexy.

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If you recall I said that song and dance were part of the mating ritual that resulted in the runaway sexual selection of certain features, like complex language, costume, creativity, dancing legs, and ... bare skin.

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Which is like appealing to intelligent design - in the lack of any other explanation, it MUST have been sexual! Catch me before I fall, matron. It remains a non answer.

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Because they are Alpha Males? ROFLOL. They are alpha because they are rock stars, not rock stars because they are alpha.

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Thats what I said. The very social respect they command makes them so.

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They are rock stars because they can sing and dance and display creativity and show off a lot of bare body and moving booty in a creative, entertaining and attraction gathering way.

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Can you cite any other animal that does these things? Becuase as they ALL arise from sexual selection, one would expect them to arise consistently, no?

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I am running out of laughter here. Marathon runners don’t have groupies because they are not sex symbols.

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Yes - you are failing to challenge my points, you know.

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The dancing skill of soccer players goes back (once more) to the mating ritual dancing ...... not to the running skill: just look at the game highlights eh?

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No no noot - tha dancing skills display their running competence, geddit?Now lets take another look at your "summary"RUNNING:* cannot explain long hair on head
... but does not contradict it* cannot explain hair in high sweat armpits
... but does not contradict it* cannot explain hair in high sweat pubic area
... but does not contradict it* cannot explain hair on high sweat area of male only face
... explained through standard combat adaptaion, running model reinforced* cannot explain greater variation of hairiness in males
... cannot explain varying height in either sex aither. Duh. Natural variation is sufficient.* cannot explain greater average hairiness of males
... explained above, does not contradict model* cannot explain virtual lack of sexiness of running stars
... but does explain the sexiness of dancers and leg/foot fetishism* cannot explain why the larger and faster male is hairier than the female
... you're repeating yourself, this is twice answered above* cannot explain actual sexiness of singing and dancing stars
... becuase RAZD cannot read. Rock stars are only sexy becuase of TV.* cannot explain that singing and dancing stars do not look like runners
... becuase they are not directly relevant* cannot explain actual sexiness of naked and shaved porn stars
... does, becuase hairlessness has survival value* cannot explain that porn stars do not look like runners
... RAZD becomes possibly absurdist. They are sexy by standard running ape standards.* cannot explain the virtual lack of any similar {hair\fur} trend in other species, even ones larger than humans that run in a hot environment, as should be predicted (or at a minimum, not be unexpected) if it is survival selection related to natural variation in {hair\fur} density.... displays startling ignorance of the easily observed and much studied heat dissipation mechanisms in all ammalls, aquatic or terrestrial. the pattern of heavier fur toward the poles and thinner, lighter fur toward the equator is undeniable.... RAZD is therfore

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Absurd -

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You are conflating two different arguments. Why should sexual selection explain a survival feature? Do male peacock tail feathers explain the remarkable ability of peacocks to fly or walk or crow?

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Because otherwise the organism has no basis for judging the sexiness of a potential mate. As I have already pointed out, "sexual selection" as a phrase is entirely useless for any productive discussion; the ONLY thing it can meaningfully address on its own is runaway counterproductive processes. This is why it is totally inadequate as an explanation for human hair loss, as hair loss appears fundamental to our aboriginal mode of operation.

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This is as irrelevant as the baleen example to my position.

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Baleen was only offered as a falsification of your claim that the ONLY influence ever observed on hair is non-productiove sexual selection. The Baleen example demonstrates clearly that hair can and has been the subject of specific fitness developement.

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For the record I have noted before it takes the human tracking ability and the conscious behavior to not exhaust oneself in the running, and that is sufficient to differentiate human behavior from other animals in that particular behavior.

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It is not I'm afraid. First of all, many animals can track - that is very far from a uniquely human ability. Secondly, all running animals pace themselves - otherwise they would be routinely running themselves to death as soon as they were chased by a rpedator, and that simply does not happen. It's trivial to observe that wolves, for example, have a loping gate for covering distances and a sprint gate for the chase. Horses have many more gaits than that. This is a non-problem.

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Whether that behavior can then be the basis for bareness rather than just the usual long limbs and good lungs of all other running animals has not been shown.

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Only if you ignore bipedalism. Now the argument I am working from takes bipedalism to be very important, becuase by being bipedal we do not lose energy invested in locomation as 4-legfged animals do when the front half of their bodies come crashing down with every step. We are inherently unstable when running, unlike like 4-leggeds, becuase we are permanently off balance and running to keep up. And this means that our running is more efficient than that of quadrupeds, and that other adaptations, such as loss of hair EXCEPT on the top of the head (and some other trivial bits) is directly related to our bipedalism.

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Run the experiment as I outlined and see what the results are. Until then, you don't have any basis for your claim, or your insults, or your false strawmen arguments and ridiculous non-sequiturs, or your unwillingness to look at other information. Especially when you repeat the strawmen arguments when they have been shown to be false representations. Sorry, but I expected better.

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Thats just sour grapes, RAZD. [quote] This is new: your model of hair loss for greater cooling now predicts that human head hair is the longest hair in the ape kingdom, to the point where it completely covers many areas that are supposedly bared for greater cooling. Fascinating. Tell me again why male necks and shoulders are bare when they are then completely {surrounded\covered} by facial and head hair? Based on cooling of the bare areas?[/qupte]And yet again your argument depends on systematic dishonesty. I did not say that my model predicted LONG hair; I said that my model predicted the RETENTION OF HEAD HAIR. This is a dishonest manipulation of my argument, isn't it RAZD? You have done it repeatedly, please desist.

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Oops, looks like it isn't for cooling but for "armor" and the sexual dimorphism so "easily addressed" shows that females are not so protected and this is good? And losing head hair with old age so that it is no longer protected from the sun this too is good?

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Yes. I mean please, your argument sounds like that of a 9-year old: if I say that running is a basic mode of production you choose to interpret that as the claim that "there are and can be no other influences". Thats just childish, RAZD, please advance an adult argument. It is frankly stupid to pretend that only one influence is ever operational. Whatever physical form finally emerges will be a synthersis of ALL envrionmental pressures, not only one.In apes and many other animals, hair serves as armour. In a running ape, most of that armour can be lost, but its not cost efficient to lose the neck-armour of your primary combatants - because that is the place most predators know to attack! If you look at military history you will observe that mobility and combat effectiveness are inherently countervailing trends. Similarly, the loss of head hair in old men is no biggie if they are no longer fit enough to handle the long chase at all. Your argument descends to pettiness.

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Actually I doubt that you are willing to listen at all, for your demonstrated behavior is consistently, aggressively if not insultingly otherwise.

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Thats what you get when you twist your opponents argument to discredit it. If you will not debate honestly, you are not worthy of honest debate.

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But, and this is important, we are not talking just normal courtship {displays\rituals}, but run-away feedback selection, where a feature or set of features are selected and developed well beyond their ability to signal fitness.

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Recapaitulation of mating basics for kindergarten ommitted. Here is the question you persistently refuse to engage with: ARE we looking at runaway selction, or are we looking at environmental adaptation? If so, what is the basis for that claim, and for ruling out the appearence of bareness as related to fitness? That is purely an assumption on your part which you have so far only been able to defend by analogy to other animals. By your logic, we would be compelled to conlude that the fine hair in cetaceans did NOT evolve as a response to the environment in which they find themselves, even progressively over millions of years. No, apparently its purely an accident that cetacean hair contributes to their swimming efficiency; according to your argument, the illogical runaway sexually selected feedback that produced this fine hair could just as easily have produced a thick mass of fur that would have impeded their swimming.So how is it there is not a single aqautic mammal with long hair, and that all aquatic mammals are as streamlined as their body form can make? According to your argument, thats not even a meaningful question.

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Head hair grows to extreme lengths, like the tails of scissortail birds, and flows down over the shoulders and back to the waist and beyond. The longer the hair the more fit the specimen is for avoiding predators in spite of greater visibility, and the more lustrous the hair the more fit the specimen is for having the nutritional resources to grow and keep the hair in that condition. Such features are not of themselves useful in survival, they are indicators of the overall fitness of the rest of the individual for survival. Again, this is not new, or unusual, or groundbreaking information.

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Sure. Unfortunately, none of it supports your argument. The fact that it is reasonable to interpret long head hair as sexually selected does not in any sense imply that the elmination of body hair was selected by the same mechanism. Is it your argument that the perfectly serviceable short feathers on peacocks are also sexually selected for smallness? I have never denied the PRESENCE of sexual selection, nor its potential counter-poroductive outcome. But what you have NOT shown is why it should be thought that hairlessness in humans is related to this process.

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umans have a number of features that do not of themselves contribute to survival fitness, but which do indicate overall fitness, and among them are extreme long head hair, and extreme body bareness.

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Nonsense - you are arguing your conclusion. It is NOT shown that body bareness is non-contributing to our fitness. I have cogently argued that it DOES contribute to our fitness, and that this is in line with all other mammals and their appraoch to temperature regulation.

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And it is not just that these features exist, but that the patterns of their existence are consistent with a sexual {ability\availability} display feature and a runaway feedback feature.

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Except that when I point out that human hairlessness does NOT look like a runaway feedback process precisely because it is constrained by operational needs for head-top and genital hair, you dismiss this out of hand. There is no basis whatsoever for thinking human hairlessness is unrelated to our fitness, and many reasons for thinking it is directly related.

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answer the rest of your post as it has already been refuted):

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Diddums. Would Baby like a rattle to throw out of his cot?

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{{Actually it does. All that is needed for your position is a full head of hair as exists on any of the other apes. Extreme long hair that extends so far that it covers bares skin serves no cooling or protection benefit that would not be served by normal hair\fur.}}

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Once again you twist my argument. I never claimed that LONG hair on the human head is required by my model. The fact that this long hair MAY cause certain problems is easily dealt with by your own runaway sexual selection model. Please apply your own arguments concistently, no opportunistically.

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{{And it needs to explain it for the mechanism to have credibility. This is an issue of consistency of the pattern observed to the proposed mechanism. Not contradicting is not good enough.}}

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Nonsense as I have already explained multiple times - there may be another need othogonal to heat dissipation that triggers this pehnomenon. I have proposed scent-trapping; this is reinforced by recent research that mosquitos are repelled by certain chemicals we excrete through the skin. Thus there may be a need to have scent-traps in certain areas even if hairlessness is an optimum solution. And thus a compromise is arrived at; this is not rocket science, RAZD, and comprehensively demonstrates theat your objection is not a falsifier.

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{{Actually this is not any part of a running model, this is adding a second model to explain the deficiencies of the first, and it is inconsistent in expression in sexes and inconsistent in expression over areas needing protection, like the stomach. Occams razor says that one explanation is better than two.}}

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Ha ha ha. I see, so now organisms living in a chaotic world are expected to be subject to only ONE evolutionary influence at a time? Can you cite any other examples? Why don't all birds have an albatross's singularly refined wing? Might it perhaps be because they have OTHER NEEDS that mean that a different wing is a better choice? Evolution does not occur in a wind tunnel hermetically sealed from other influences, RAZD.As to why the neck is protected, it is quite simply becuase the neck is an efficient point to attack. Almost all chase and pounce predators attack the neck by preference, aquatic aniumals excepted.

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{{Sorry, not explained properly above, and it needs to be fully explained for the mechanism to have credibility. This is an issue of consistency of the pattern observed to the proposed mechanism. We are talking an average hairiness of males that is 2 or 3 times the hairiness of females while at the same time these are the ones doing the marathon running after the game animals. If anything the pattern should be reversed, with females hairier than males if your model was properly applied.}}

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Actually thats nonsense. As we recently discussed in relation to light and dark skin tones in men and women, in a thread raised by Brennakimi, it is plausible to see a selection for darkness in men by women, and a commensurate selection for lightness in women by men, would have the effect of two diagonal vectors being synthesised into a singular vector between the two, while retaining that dimorphism in expressed phenotypes.Again what you fail to address is that fitness is negotiated by feedback from the world, not laid down by law from above and conformed to. The trade off between armour and speed is a fundamental physical limitaion that applies to all physical objects as an artifact of physics.AND THEN, for whatever elements you still find unexplained, I can resort to your own sexual selection to rationalise the outliers. Peacocks do not have tails FOR THE PURPOSES of being sexy; they have tails as a result of being birds, and that being part of the package. Any subsequent sex-sexlected influence is seocndary to the fitness influences that casued tail features to appear in the first place. Similarly, I can argue that hairlessness is explained by fitness almost entirely, and any remaining weirdness can be rationalised.

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{{Dancers and leg/foot fetishism explained by sexiness of dancers, lack of sexiness of running stars needs to be explained for the mechanism to have credibility. This is an issue of consistency of the pattern observed to the proposed mechanism.}}

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And it has been explained - Beyonce appears daily on TV before pubescent boys every day, how often does anyone view running stars? Again, this is a totally spurious objection and can be dismissed as silly. I remind you again that sexinees of dancers can also be explained by the running model, thius this is no way a falsification either.

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{{You miss the distinction of this argument entirely, this is relating the size of males\females to the hairiness issue. Larger=hotter, should be barer. Again on the size issue the roles of male\female hairiness should be reversed to be consistent you’re your model.}}

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Except thats inherently nonsense, assuming that evolution is occurring in an environemnt that only ever applies one influence at a time, nor that multiple influences might require compromise designs. Yes, its a trade-off - so what? This is not a falsification either.Ha ha ha - pot/kettle

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You fail to address that if runners are supposed to be sexy, then why don't sexy singing and dancing stars look like runners. Again, it needs to be explained for the mechanism to have credibility. This is an issue of consistency of the pattern observed to the proposed mechanism.}}

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Actually this raise an interesting falsification to your claim: male dancers often look terrible. This is because they do so many lifts and jumps that they develop these massive thighs and calves and have totally weedy upper bodies, contradicting the male V-shape quite dramatically.But by all means expand on what precisely you feel the differences in the body form between runners and dancers are. your initial claim was that this was represented by GROUPIES, but I have already dealt with that claim. Many many dancers are very muscular people - please expand.

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{{Which is why we have clothes. Again, you fail to address the issue of extreme bareness of the porn stars.

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I find it absurd that you think this is a serious point; I assumed it was throw-away you reached for while on the ropes. Even if I take this silly claim at face failure, it simply does not support your claim the way you appear to think it should; my argument shows that there might be a reason for selcting hairlessness, your argument is only that it is entirely accidental.

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Notice that this issue of shaving is not restricted just to porn stars but to general behavior in attracting mates, with females shaving legs and pits (remember those?) and males shaving faces (and chest and back for the more hirsute ones). Once more, this needs to be explained for the mechanism to have credibility. This is an issue of consistency of the pattern observed to the proposed mechanism.}}

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LOL does it now. Becuase shaving is such a new phenomnon I'm not sure that it has anything meaningful to say about our evolutionary history. In feudal Ireland, British men-at-arms were instructed to shave "if they would be taken for Englishmen", because it was common for the Irish to wear very large mustaches. Not all shave their armpits anyway - to the best of my knowledge that is essentially a Western affectation, and I am not aware on any research on its commonality in other societies.

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{{Again, you fail to address the point that if runners are supposed to be sexy, then why don't sexy naked and shaved porn stars look like runners. Once more, this needs to be explained for the mechanism to have credibility. This is an issue of consistency of the pattern observed to the proposed mechanism.}}

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What you fail to ackonowledge, RAZD, is that we ALL look like runners. Porn selects for beauty, more or less, which according to my arguments MEANS "looking like runners". So by and large this means: long legged, slim, symmetrical. This does not challenge my point in any way.

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* cannot explain the virtual lack of any similar {hair\fur} trend in other species, even ones larger than humans that run in a hot environment, as should be predicted (or at a minimum, not be unexpected) if it is survival selection related to natural variation in {hair\fur} density.

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Except, so what? If we have now-dead relatives in the Naenderthals, and in other pre-human primates, then we have a clear niche that is being consistently exploited by animals with the appropriate bodyform. The fact that WE happen to occupy this niche alone is no way a sound argument. There are very few mammals in the sea - do you take them to be absurd aberrations?Once again, your objection to not seeing similar trends in bigger running animals is facetious; I have already shown that many of the really big svannah animals already are hairless or nearly so; many of the others, such as camels, have other countervailing conditions to cnotend with, such as the extreme cold of desert nights. Ironically for someone claiming to advance a naturalist hypoethis, you are failing to account for the complexity of natural conditions. If you have a specific case to present, do so.

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{{Yes there is a slight general trend in other animals (as I believe I have mentioned before) but in none of them is it taken to the extreme ... {length?} that it is in humans without other caveats being involved (such as with marine animals dealing with water friction or extreme size like elephants)

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But my argument is preciselty that it IS occurring becuase of those other influences anaologous to water friction; that it is occurring as a fitness-maximising feature.

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that is -- there are no animals comparable in size and {habitat\econiche} that have this feature.

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But considering that for examples we find strange pockets of marsupials, and that the duck-billed platypus appears to be such a werid conglomeration of random features (some of which without precedent, such as the poison spurs) that this argument from incredulity is simply weak.

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This is what I mean by similar. Plus the variation seen is more in the length of hair (and adding sheddable hair?) rather than density, so we should expect to see the remaining hair on humans to be short rather than thin, a velvet coat would suffice. I hate to keep hammering this but it may be the only way you see it: this is an issue of consistency of the pattern observed to the proposed mechanism.

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Yes exactly so, and depite your various attempts you have failed to show any failure in this consistency. Animals that shed their coats inhabit regions with major seasonal temperature fluctuations; the African savannah as a rule does not experience these to any significant degree. Equally, if a velvet coat "might" suffice, that does not imply that it would necessarily have been selected - ANY solution that is good enough will do. Further, I don't think a velvet coat would suffice on the basis, I have read, that we sweat easily copiously by comparison with other animals.

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If your proposal is inconsistent across a number of relevant factors while another proposal is consistent across those same relevant factors, AND there are not other factors where your position is more consistent than the other proposal then your explanation of the observed evidence is weaker than the other.}}

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Exactly so. That is preciesly why inexplicable random sexual selection out of the blue is substantially inferior to the running ape hypothesis.

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Strawmen arguments and ad hominum attacks are the sign of a poor argument, repeating strawman arguments after their specific errors have been pointed out demonstrate a failure of commitment to honest discussion.

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Yes thats true, RAZD, and yet you have concistently perpetrated all of them. This very post of yours is in large part re-raising straw men I have already dealt with.

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First humans have a thick layer of subcutaneous fat that is similar to the fat layers in marine animals that also need to keep warm but have the added survival need to shed hair for speed in the water (and the whales and porpoises do not have fine hair, they have no hair on these surfaces): this layer is thicker in Inuit people of the arctic than in Nordic people between them and Africa, and they are barer than the Nordic people as well as less developed for running (shorter, thicker bodies).

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I see. So maybe that arose due to counterproductive runaway sexual selection? See how easy the non-answwer is to use?Even if it is true that, after hairlessness became a fundamental fitness feature (like tails in birds), sexual selection ran away with it to the point that it became counter-productive, THIS DOES NOT SUPPORT THE CLAIM THAT IT HAS OCCURRED ONLY DUE TO SEXUAL SELECTION.

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(2) You completely failed to address the issue of the consistent explanations of the relevant factors that I gave by sexual selection. Let me repeat them to refresh your memory again:

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I ran out of time, get a grip.

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# does explain long hair on head as a typical feature of run-away selection, just like a peacock tail

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Agreed. Except, my explanation gives us a basis for seeing it on the head in the first place. Your argument requires two seperate and contradictory selection trends: first selecting for hairlessnes,, and then selcting for long hair length. mny explanation accord much more closely with the observed facts and requirtes fewer assumptions.

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# does explain greater reduction of hair on the torso than in high sweat armpits and pubic area as being centered on baring the female breast sexual signaling area

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Despite the fact that it occurs over the whole body, thus uindermining the claim that it is intended to reveal the breasts. This is further undermineind by the continuation of hair on the genitals.

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# does explain greater variation of hairiness in males, because the selection is (obviously) taking place in the females: thus the more consistent level of bareness in the females, as well as the greater expression of this feature overall, versus the secondary expression in the males (where is it not being selected, and thus allows for greater average hairiness, hairiness in facial areas bare in females, and greater variation in hairiness overall in males than in females)

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Oh its "obvious" its occurring in the females, is it? Thats blatant thumb-sucking, RAZD, its only "obvious" if you assume your conclusion.

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# does explain virtual lack of sexiness of running stars and why the larger faster male is hairier - this trait is not related to the sexual issue that is driving the bareness feature.

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This notional lack of sexiness in running stars has not in any way, shape or form been demonstrated, becuase of the differing degrees of social value attributed to their professions, which is purely temporal phenomenon.

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# does explain actual sexiness of singing and dancing stars (song and dance are part of the mating ritual that began the run-away feedback cycle)

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Not at all - becuase the very argument to dancing, which is a pedal motion, may also be a flautning or demonstration of running fitness.

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# does explain that singing and dancing stars do not look like runners (they don’t need to)

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Except you will recall the advent of TV killed off the ugly singer who could carry a career. Now you need be a good singer, and also be slim and fit like a runner.

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# does explain actual sexiness of naked and shaved porn stars (they are sexy because they are bare)

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... which requires assuming the conclusion

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# does explain that porn stars do not look like runners (they don’t need to)

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... except they do anyway

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# does explain the virtual lack of any similar {hair\fur} trend in other species, ... because it is not survival related.

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... except that temperature regulation techniques are fundamental to all mammals, and many mamalls exhibit hair that conforms to their local environments, even varying in thickness seasonally to react to external conditions.In all respscts your argument is hogwash. Here are some exaples of features that humans exhibit whioch you need to explain, then:

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Anatomical Features that Help Humans Run

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Here are anatomical characteristics that are unique to humans and that play a role in helping people run, according to the study:

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Skull features that help prevent overheating during running. As sweat evaporates from the scalp, forehead and face, the evaporation cools blood draining from the head. Veins carrying that cooled blood pass near the carotid arteries, thus helping cool blood flowing through the carotids to the brain.

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A more balanced head with a flatter face, smaller teeth and short snout, compared with australopithecines. That "shifts the center of mass back so it's easier to balance your head when you are bobbing up and down running," Bramble says.

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A ligament that runs from the back of the skull and neck down to the thoracic vertebrae, and acts as a shock absorber and helps the arms and shoulders counterbalance the head during running.

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Unlike apes and australopithecines, the shoulders in early humans were "decoupled" from the head and neck, allowing the body to rotate while the head aims forward during running.

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The tall human body - with a narrow trunk, waist and pelvis - creates more skin surface for our size, permitting greater cooling during running. It also lets the upper and lower body move independently, "which allows you to use your upper body to counteract the twisting forces from your swinging legs," Bramble says.

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Shorter forearms in humans make it easier for the upper body to counterbalance the lower body during running. They also reduce the amount of muscle power needed to keep the arms flexed when running.

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Human vertebrae and disks are larger in diameter relative to body mass than are those in apes or australopithecines. "This is related to shock absorption," says Bramble. "It allows the back to take bigger loads when human runners hit the ground."

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The connection between the pelvis and spine is stronger and larger relative to body size in humans than in their ancestors, providing more stability and shock absorption during running.

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Human buttocks "are huge," says Bramble. "Have you ever looked at an ape? They have no buns." He says human buttocks "are muscles critical for stabilization in running" because they connect the femur - the large bone in each upper leg - to the trunk. Because people lean forward at the hip during running, the buttocks "keep you from pitching over on your nose each time a foot hits the ground."

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Long legs, which chimps and australopithecines lack, let humans to take huge strides when running, Bramble says. So do ligaments and tendons - including the long Achilles tendon - which act like springs that store and release mechanical energy during running. The tendons and ligaments also mean human lower legs that are less muscular and lighter, requiring less energy to move them during running.

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Larger surface areas in the hip, knee and ankle joints, for improved shock absorption during running by spreading out the forces.

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The arrangement of bones in the human foot creates a stable or stiff arch that makes the whole foot more rigid, so the human runner can push off the ground more efficiently and utilize ligaments on the bottom of the feet as springs.

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Humans also evolved with an enlarged heel bone for better shock absorption, as well as shorter toes and a big toe that is fully drawn in toward the other toes for better pushing off during running

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Article here: http://www.scienceinafrica.co.za/2005/january/running.htmLess detailed article containing some counter-arguments for your perusal here:
Unlike apes, humans were born to run, study says / Finding could help date human evolution -- but other scientists say theory is bunkBoth refer to the same research.

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Your list of a dozen or so features don't include hair, or lack thereof. Neither site mentioned hair that I saw. It seems to me RAZD is arguing sexual selection of hairlessness, so why exactly does he need to explain those dozen mostly skeletal features? Kudos to your nicely referenced strawman.

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MY strawman? Of all the arrogant bullshit...Its very simple Sasquatch. As RAZD has been at pains to point out, what matters is consistency with all observed phenomenon. RAZD advances this argument - human hairlessness is INEXPLICABLE from efficiency or fitness concersn, therefore it MUSTN BE due to runaway sexual selection.My argument is that there IS an hypothesis in which the adapatation is functional, and that is the running ape model. There is no need to default to sexual selection FOR LACK OF ANY OTHER HYPOTHESIS. And in order to challenge that claim RAZD has been arguing that the running ape model is ridiculous in toto.Therefore it is entirely accurate to demonstrate the other evidence that corroborates the running ape model and which contributes to the model as a whole. RAZD keeps saying that hairlessness is "odd" and needs to be accounted for, but completely fails to account for the many adaptations we clearly have to our most basic functional mode - bipedalism, and out amazing capacity for covering disdtances at speed.

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Then when you can't do that, find the posts where I explained the difference between this claim and what I really said. List each one, if you don't know the difference, with complete verbatum quotes.

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This is what a strawman argument is: a false representation of the opposing view in an easily refuted fake form. This is your argument here, this is most of your argument.

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Well RAZD, if I misunderstood your argument and responded innaproprioately, that is still no excuse for misrepresenting WHY I produced Baleen as a counter-point, and trying to make it say things I never intended it tos say. Mistakes happen; adults realise this.

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The rest of your post? heh. Still doesn't answer why run-away sexual selection provides more answers and more self consistent answer to the list of factors that I gave.

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Except that you have consistently sailed to show that runaway sexual selction DOES give better answers. I have shown most of your objections to be spurious.

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Actually, I have asked you repeatedly for the explanation of long hair on the heads of humans, and this is the only answer you have provided. If that is not your answer for long hair, then you still have not answered that problem, which means that you are equivocating. "Retention of head hair" only means it would be like the hair on other apes. It isn't. It remarkably isn't. It fantastically isn't. Again your model falls short of explaining the actually observed features.

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See, and you have the cheek to accuse me of straw men? I will lay out my reponse for you yet again.1) My model does not claim to be able to explain absolutely every feature of human beings. I have never proposed an explanation of the vermiform appendix as arising due to running. Your Universalist requirement for any theory about SOME adaptations to be applicable to ALL adaptations is blatantly illogical and bad science.2) I have never challenged the claim that long head hair is a sexual characterisitic. That does not however in any way imply that the loss of body hair is also a sexual characteristic. therefore, I am both willing an able to accept that the LENGTH of head hair is sexually slected, and simultansoulsy argue that the mere PRESENCE of head hair is an environmentalo adaptation.3) Your presumption therefiore that the length of head hair is a disqualifier of my argument falls. My model predicts WHY IT IS HEAD HAIR that is available for sexual selection. My theory is better than yours.

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This is consistently your problem: in spite of all the misrepresentations of my arguments and all the ad hominums, your model does not consistently explain the observed features and behavior of humans, and sexual selection does.

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Sexual selection does not at all, and my model precisely predicts the presence of head hair. the LENGTH of that head hair is by no means a diusqualifier of the claim. And thus we see that this is consistently YOUR problem; you have been given this explanation multiple times and not once have you provided a crtiique or rejection - you just sit there shouting "you have failed to explain it". Thats blatant rubbish, isn it?

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And now explain how this results in the hairier males that are doing the running that the hairlessness is being selected for while resulting in barer females? I could try to state this for you but you seem to go off the handle when I do: perhaps you could elucidate with clarity just exactly how this occurs?

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Again, this is a question I have already answered. Are you really so stupid that you cannot imagine that conuntervailing strategies may rule out a truly optimum solution? Evolution does not occur in wind tunnels; the mobility granted by hairlesness is necessarily a trade off with the needs you find operational when you arrive at your destination. Nobody ever said that only males were doing the running. All I said was tha males were the primary combatants. We are talking about nomadic groups here, after all.

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What you fail to understand (apart from my argument entirely, as it is here - again - totally misrepresented) is that I have never been on the ropes, and that I am very serious about this issue. I notice again that you dismiss the argument instead of address it.

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HAHA. You are most certainly on the ropes, because the only way you can respond to my argumient is via straw men and misrepresentations. And I ask, what would be the point of addressing your argument in a single praragraph of a whole post addressing your argument?If you would like to restate your argument for my better comprehension, if you disagree with that cited as I understand it in the post above in response to Pink Sasquatch, by all means do so.It remains the case, however, that "srunaway sexual selection" explains fewer features of actual human anatomy than the running ape model. Runaway sexual selection is a very poor explanation.

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{{I could, but I won't stoop to your level, in spite of the many such opportunities. Perhaps if you spent less time on gratuitous insults you would have more time to address the issues.}}

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Then stop misrepresenting my arguments. If you want to be respected, behave in a respectworthy way.Back to the laborious details:

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{{False on several counts. One is that hair was already on the head, so existence there does not need to be explained. What needs to be explained is why it is the longest hair in the ape family by several factors much longer comparatively than the tail feathers of the scissortail bird compared to other birds of that size and weight.

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you are miostaken. The presence of head hair DOES need to be explained - because it directly contradicts the general trend to hairlessness. It is precisely becuase we can see that the retention of hair on the head is functional, not accidental, that it's retention does NOT appear to have anything to do with sexual selection. The LENGTH of that hair CAN be explained by sexual selection - but not its presence.

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This is not explained by your running model or your (newly added) armor model. This is adequately explained by runaway sexual selection just as the tail feathers are.

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No, it is even PREDICTED by my model. In the article in which I read of the theory, it was one of the primary arguments advanced; that the retention of head hair required an explanation for which this was the best fit. Sexual selection explains nothing at all; the running ape idea both fits the data better and obviates the need for a self-referential non-explanation. Thus, it is a stronger argument.

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Rather than two mechanisms (your version, oh, and your model is (now) two entirely different mechanisms isn't it?) there is one.

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But seeing as there is every reason to expect that a real animal ion the real world will be undergoing multiple presssures, that it is not a menaingful objection.

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Agreeing that long hair shows runaway sexual selection and then adamantly arguing that no other features show this aspect of selection is disingenuous at best.}}

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Thats a lie, isn't it RAZD? At no time have I ever said that there definately are not any other features exhibiting sexual selection. I'm completely in agreement with notionas that breasts are sexually selected for example. ALL I have argued is that an adaptive model is a better explanation of hairlessness than sexual selection.

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{{And again you fail to address the issue and rely on dismissal. Yes it is obvious.

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It is entirely appopriate to dismiss something that is not an argument but an assertion. It may be obvious to YOU, but it may also be obvious to YOU that aliens built the pyramids.

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Peacock tails are obviously selected in the male species. Bareness is obviously selected in the female species. Conversely, if the other sex displays the feature with wide variation between individuals, wider variation on each individual and to a lesser degree overall, then it is obviously a secondary expression of the selection.

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But what you are still doing is baselessly ASSUMING that bareness is selected in the female rather than bareness is selected for in both, with a countervailing pressure for the retention of hair in males. Once again your model is implistic, isolating the organism from all environmental pressures. Thats weak; much weaker than the running ape model.

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{{As noted previously, dancing exhibits more fitness in more areas to a greater degree than just running (see previous post for the "rundown" on it). As just one example, running does not display creativity, while dancing does. Dancing displays fitness for (A,B,C and D) while running displays fitness for (A). This is an inductive logical error to think that running is more descriptive of fitness than dancing.}}

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Nope, straw man. I never said that the demosntration of running was as comprehensive a demonstration of sexual attractivesness as dance. All I argued was that dance is necessarily a pedal motion, and even in animals with no meaningful creativity, dance-type behaviours are observed. That is, it can reasonably be seen as a basic demonstration of running fitness, by displaying balance, dexterity, fleetness of foot, precision - AND also the mental functions such as creativity and others. I have not ever argued against dance being sexual selection in action - I have only argued against the proposition that DANCE explains bipedalism or rules out running as a mode of production. The basic fucntion of bipeadlism is running; dance is a non-running behaviour delivered by the same meachanisms.

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{{Yeah, who was that guy that won the first "American Idol" competition? And Stevie Nicks, Queen Latifa, Mama Cass and etcetera are just second class talent that couldn't pack an auditorium}}

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Yes - an obese woman won pop idol too. then her caree sank like a stone. And mama cass is almost mentioned as the archetypcal artist who will never be seen again for precisely that reason.om shaved pornstars: [quote] {{False. Evidence that supports the conclusion that it is bareness that is sexy.}}[/qupte]Nope, thats assuming the conclusion, becuase simply not obstructing the view is a more parsimonious explanation. It has not escaped you that porn is a visual medium, I trust?

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{{Actually the more attractive ones look better than runners because they appear adequately fed, healthy and creative: strong reasons to be good mate material.}}

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Adequately fed, like a good hunter perhaps? But your argument gets even weaker, becuase of course people who live in conditions more like those of hunter-gatherers carry much less body fat that modern westerners. That is, normal individuals in those societies look more like runners than they look like dancers in our societies. This is a sugar-free environment, lets not forget.

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{{And yet seasonal variation is curiously lacking in humans, specific reference is made again to the Inuit people, that could benefit most from a little variation and where cooling is not necessary anymore.}}

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I'm aware seasonal variation is lacking in humans - its almost unioticabel on the african savannah, for the most part, as I have already mentioned. Nonetheless you are again misrepresenting my argument and trying to bait-and-switch it onto another topic - as you know, what I was demmonstarting was that the relation between hair and temperature regulation is inherent to mammals.I read the Innuit only arrived in there present location at about 1000AD, so they have only had about a thousand years to evolve. Isn;t that a bit ambitious? Even if we assumed there were genes running back to the first human colonisers of this nich, this would only give 4,5000 years. Furthermore, according to the running ape model, we would expect to see the polar reagions being the last colonised, because they are the regions to which humans are least adapted and thus require the most technical intervention - chief among these being clothes and fire. And that indeed is what we see.

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{{Why? Because you miss the point that the argument is about selection of bareness in humans and not about baleen in whales or thick coats of fur with closed air cells in cariboo?}}

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Except you fail to recognise that the entire debate is about WHETHER they are relevant or not. you are not permitted to assume your own conclusion and then insist that the entire "debate" be conducted in that light. Furthermore, it is an entirely appropriate response to YOUR claim that my explanation failed to explain certain features; as you pointed out, this spoke to the consistency of the model. Now I have demonstarted that YOUR model leaves many features unexplained, and thus undermines the consistency of your model. Turnabout is fair play.

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ps - how do you explain art (all forms) as a result of evolution?

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Start a different thread on that topic if you want to discuss it.Now, to satisfy Pink Sasquatches interventionist urges, and to provide yet more material for RAZD to "debunk", I offer the following:Human Thermoregulation and Hair Loss - Modern Human Origins claims that:

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The sweating mechanism of modern humans is the single most important thermoregulatory device available to reduce heat load on the body and likely has coevolved with the loss of body hair in the human lineage. Sweating is a thermoregulatory mechanism of modern humans that effectively removes body heat through evaporation. It becomes extremely effective in the absence of heavy body hair, and actually can be maladaptive in the presence of heavy hair cover.

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... and

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Evaporative heat loss through the use of the eccrine gland system in humans is extremely effective at removing unwanted body heat. Evaporative heat loss occurs through the secretion of sweat primarily made of water, the heat exchange from the skin (that is artificially maintaining a larger proportion of heat due to the highly developed vascular system that moves heated blood from the body core to the surface at high rates) into the sweat, and the evaporation of the sweat as it is either sloughed off or evaporated into the air. Effective sweating requires as little hair cover as possible, as it needs air contact (particularly moving air) over the skin to remove the heated sweat. In an individual with a prodigious sweating mechanism and dense hair cover, the heated sweat will generally be retained by the hair cover and actually begin to act as insulation preventing heat loss, leading to hyperthermia. Non-evaporative conduction becomes less and less effective with increased body size (due to the decreasing surface area to body size ratio) and with increased ambient temperature (due to a lower temperature difference between the environment and the organism) making evaporative heat loss through sweating an extremely important adaptation in the relatively large bodied ancestors of humans in the warm climate of Africa (Robertshaw 1985; Schwartz and Rosenblum 1981).

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and...

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Sexual Selection: The idea that the loss of body hair in the human lineage was a result of sexual selection is a very old one. Darwin first presented the idea in 1871 (though a footnote in the text attributes the idea - inspiration? - to Reverend T.R. Stebbing) in a text on sexual selection, which Darwin believe worked in concert with natural selection in the evolution of species. Darwin's original reasoning can be considered faulty in retrospect ("no one supposes that the nakedness of the skin is of any direct advantage to man; his body hair therefore cannot have been divested of hair through natural selection"), but some of his observations are still considered to hold true. For example, the facial hair of men has no functional or adaptive significance that can be explicated. It is a plausible explanation for the differences between male and female facial hair is sexual selection, or possibly the difference in body hair in males and females. However, invoking sexual selection as the cause of the loss of body hair in humans encounters several hurdles.

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The presence of an effective sweating mechanism for evaporative heat loss is greatly dependent on the loss of body hair in humans. If sexual selection is ultimately responsible for the loss of body hair in humans, the sweating mechanism would have to have been selected for by a separate mechanism, even though the two features would have had to develop in concert for sweating to remain effective. This is not in any way impossible, as it might be argued that the sexual selection leading to hair loss would have allowed the selection for an efficient sweating mechanism. In this scenario, sexual selection would not even have to be the main driving force of the loss of body hair; it would at the very least only be required to initiate the reduction in body hair, at which point natural selection for the thermoregulatory efficiency of the sweating mechanism might drive the denudation of the human lineage. This is not unreasonable and therefore is an open option even when discussing the selective benefits of sweating as the driving force in the loss of body hair in humans. However, while it is an option that cannot be negated, the invoking of two selective pressures to explain a single phenomenon when one can explain it just as well makes the explanation less parsimonious, though not necessarily unlikely or unreasonable.

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While http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/human.html says:

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Many mammals have complex chambers with moist linings in the nose and a heat exchange system to keep the blood cool as they pant to speed up evaporation. This was not an option for early hominids as they did not have a muzzle in which to house a cooling system. However, an upright posture would solve many of the problems, especially combined with a reduction in body hair. Upright walking means that less of the body surface is exposed directly to the sun at midday, while heat can be lost faster and any breezes are more likely to cause evaporation of sweat and so cool the body down. Retaining hair on the top of the head and perhaps the shoulders acts as a shield for the areas directly exposed to the sun.

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An improved ability to control body temperature would mean that our ancestors could forage around midday, when there was less competition and fewer predators nearby. If this is correct, hair loss probably occurred relatively early in evolution, and is linked to bipedalism.
It was a very successful lifestyle. Unlike the other apes, the australopithecines could venture into the savannah from the wooded riverbank areas which were probably their preferred habitat. They spread as far south as South Africa, and they developed over the next 2 million years into a number of different types. Some gave rise to humans, but long after humans began to make tools, there were still australopithecines wandering the African savannah. Some species, the robust australopithecines, developed huge grinding teeth, and muscles for chewing so large that they had to be attached to crests of bone running front to back on their skulls as well as wide, flared cheek bones.

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while Hair - Wikipedia says:

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One theory suggests that nature selected humans for little body hair as part of a set of adaptations including bipedal locomotion and an upright posture. Bipedal locomotion is extremely inefficient, and many animals can outrun human beings for short periods of time; such animals, however, are inefficient radiators of heat, and cannot run for long periods of time (notable exceptions include most cursorial animals, including savannah fauna). Thus, human hunters must be able to chase animals for long periods of time, and must therefore have an efficient mechanism for radiating body heat. Upright posture exposes less surface area of the body to direct solar radiation, and subcutaneous sweat glands developed, providing such a cooling mechanism. A more recent theory for human hair loss has to do with a possible period of bipedal wading in a salt marsh in the Danakil region of Ethiopia, which occurred in the hominid lineage, between 5 and 7 million years ago. As a wading animal, it was more efficient to develop short body hair and a layer of subcutaneous fat for streamlining and insulation in the aquatic environment; the eccrine sweat glands developed later after the hominids left the water. This is why most hairless mammals are aquatic (dolphins, dugongs, whales), had an aquatic period in their pasts (elephants, rhinoceroses, pigs) or have very short fine fur because of brief periods back out of the water (seals, sea lions). There is a hypothesis that claims humans are no exception to this rule of hairlessness through means of a marine transition; see Aquatic Ape Theory.

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Typically, humans have more hair on the top of the head, because this region of the body was exposed to solar radiation at all times, even when wading, and also hair where extremities meet the torso (axillary (arm-pit) hair, and pubic hair), on the eyelids and above them (eyebrows). In most societies people shave, style or adorn their hair for aesthetic reasons.

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It is absolutely unacceptable for you, RAZD, to assert that this is an idea I have simply sucked out of my thumb. It is a genuine proposition which meets ALL your objections. *I* find it satisfying; I have *not* asserted it is is an undeniable and obvious truth. It is a *suitable* counter-argument to your assertion that hairlessness is ONLY and EXCLUSIVELY sexually selected and that there are not other hypthosese on the matter. There are. Deal with it.

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Nice... you post some "evidence" (seemingly?) unrelated to the topic at hand and it's somehow my fault.

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If you mount illogical arguments and distoirt the context of others arguments, it is indeed your fault.

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Two of your the thirteen points you list involved cooling. None of them mention hair.

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And as you will read, if you can be bothered, that is directly related to sweating. We are hairless to facilitate sweating - which is a thermal control mechanisms. All of this has been perfectly consistent with my very first argument.

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The discussion is sexual selection of hairlessness.

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Is that so Sasquatch? Then why does the topic line not read "the sexual selection of hairlessness?" Don't you find that a bit odd?
In fact the topic read "the evolution of clothes?".

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Sexually selected hairlessness is not inconsistent with independent, fitness-based evolution of the other features you listed above that contribute to a running ape model. If it is, please explain specifically how.

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Gah, ahve you actually read anything I've posted? Seeing as I have already been quite happy to allow sexual selection to occur siimultaneously with the running ape model, why on earth do you ask this stupid question? I never said they were incompatible at all, I said they WERE compatbible. RAZD claimed that they were not compatible, and that hairlessness was exclusively due to runaway sexual selection. Please direct your question to RAZD and do as all the courtesy of actually reading the thread you seek to comment on.

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I'll check out the websites you quote in your response to RAZD - they seem more to the point, and on my quick scan I noticed that one states that sexual selection may have played a major role in the loss of hair.

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Sure. But why do you think that would be surprising to me? I've consistently argued that we are being sexually selected for running fitness - that the two pressures are sympathetic. That we recognise sexiness by its proximity to a "running ape" ideal. AND I pointed out that this was far more frtuiful a line of thought than just tossing it under "runaway" sexual selection without purpose or meaning or functionality.

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And as far as me being an "interjectionist", if you want to have a one-on-one debate with RAZD, move it to a Great Debate topic. This is an open discussion forum

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Fair enough. But then read the thread and respond to the points actually being made.

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{proposition}
I have read your post. I have also read pink sasquatch's post. The main conclusion I come to is that this nit-picking debate is not working for either of us - each feels that the other badly misunderstands\misrepresents the other, and concentrates on "correcting" that to the point of interfering with the discussion.

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Agreed.

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n other words you can state what you think my position is and I will {adjust\correct} that until we can both agree on an understanding of the proposed process.

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OK. In message 35 Mr Jack wrote:

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There's some evidence that humans lost their fur as an adaptation for persistance hunting - our greater heat loss ability allows us to keep going for longer. Clothes, even furs, are not equivalent to having your own fur because you can just take them on and off.

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to which you subsequently responded, in message 45, that if this were true cheetahs should have less hair. Mr Jack clarified in message 63, writing:

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No. The hypothesis in human's is that furlessness is an adaptation to long-distance running; cheatah's are sprinters.

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To which you replied in message 65:

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attributing our {rare} loss of hair to our {unique} long-distance ability in this regard is a logical (causal) fallacy -- they are not necessarily connected.

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And further, in message 75, this time to me arguing in defence of the running ape model:

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heat regulation for running doesn't show up in other running animals, so to me there has to be another factor, such as running with a {camouflage\ceremonial} costume on that artificially reduces heat loss.

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In message 87 you argued, in response to Jar:

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a. variation within the population exists
b. significant advantage claimed for humans

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see, I just don't see this as the major ne plus ultra reason for the reduction of hair size in humans.

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I think it could well have been a contributing factor, but I think when push comes to shove that sexual selection trumps the running in heat model. your (b) is blocked by sexual selection ...

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Whereupon I have tried to show that there can indeed be a significant actual benefit to hairlessness specifically and directly linked to bipedalism and long distance running. You have attacked either the mechanisms of heat dissipation, or argued that there is no other animal with the same engineering, or argued that sexual selection is the only viable explanation of hairlessness point blank.I have specifically disagreed with your message 65 saying that this is a logical/causal fallacy, and instead have argued that our hairlessness, bipedalism, and sweating facility all produce a particular mode of operation analogous to that of any other creature appropriately adapated to its environment, just as dolphins have fins, streamlining, a top-mounted blowhole and sonar. From my perspective the invocation of runaway sexual selection to explain these features is unnecessary, and even wrong, because the suite of adpatations we do have amount to an entirely plausible model of early human activity.But what I am not really able to do is give you anything approaching a description of the evolutionary process by which this arose. I am simply not qualified to do so. I favour the running ape model, IMO it explains harilessness, and a variety of other unique features, in a cogent and satiusfying way AFAIC. All I have argued is that this model should not be ruled out, as you appear to do - and especially not on some of the specious grounds presented. I really cannot see what a thread between us discussing this model would achieve - I can't make any better argument than those in the documents I linked. If its truly the case that you have never heard of this idea before, then referring you to those is the best thing I can do.

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Any complaints\modifications to that definition?

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You ommitted hairlessness from the list of running-facilitative features.Apart from that, nothing significant. I speculate that perhaps a precursor migrated into an area of combined tropical forest and savannah as found on the east coast of africa, but thats all.

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Do you mean hair thinning started before the running? The timing of the developments is pretty crucial to each model, so I really want to be clear on this.

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I'm afraid I cannot answer that question. I would suggest you take it up with those professionals who articulated the theory. Indeed, there was an email address on one of the links I provided, although I have no idea if it is current.As I have already pointed out, I am not willing to enagge you in a technical debate with your specialty. As I have already pointed out, all I did was defend the existence of A theory of hair thinning. That is the sum total of the point at issue.

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now it is your turn to provide the same level (or better) of detail in the definition of the sexual selection process.

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I'm afraid I cannot answer that question. I would suggest you take it up with those professionals who articulated the theory. Indeed, there was an email address on one of the links I provided, although I have no idea if it is current.

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How can you possibly say that your mechanism explains the evidence better when you don't even understand what it is being measured against?

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I didn;t say that. All I said was that THERE IS ANOTHER THEORY. You have contended that there is not, and my claims that there was were being "sucked out of my thumb".I said it is a theory I find PREFERABLE, becuase it explains many more features, and does not require the recursion and meaninglessness of sexual selection.Do you now finally acknowledge the existance of a rival argument as to the origin of hairlessness in humans?[and yes, I already openly admitted that I don't know the process and am not trained in this field, whch is precisely why I turned down your bait, RAZD. Play like an adult.]

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Except that I never said either of those statements. In fact if you look back I wager you will see that not only do I consider there two be more than one theory, I consider there to be more than two

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Ahuh. Do you still maintain that:

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attributing our {rare} loss of hair to our {unique} long-distance ability in this regard is a logical (causal) fallacy -- they are not necessarily connected.

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Yes or no?do you still assert that an effectiveness improvement through hair loss is "blocked" by sexual selection? Yes or no?

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Do you want to talk about the "aquatic ape" theory? I believe I have mentioned it early in this thread (not that I think it is valid -- that is a different issue).

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Now you are weavoing about. above, you are trying tio sidle out of the storng statements you made previously and instead claim that your arghument was not the rejection of any other thweory but the expression of your preference for that theory. Now you say the validity of the aquatic ape theory is irrelevant.No, I do not want to discuss the aqatic ape theory, becuase a) I find it less compelling than the runnning ape model, and b) it was the specific argument to hairlessness in the running ape model WHICH WAS RELEVANT TO THIS THREAD. The one about clothes, you may recall.

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Or you find it preferable because you understand it and you don't understand sexual selection? Meaningless? Hardly. Explains more features? Seems to me that has not been shown yet. If you want we can discuss just the issue of long head hair and how it relates to sexual selection - and see whether it is a meaningless concept or not.

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Yes, meaningless. It's a suitable explanation for a feature that is otherwise inexplicable. It is not suitable for feature that can otherwise be explained. Because that model adds no information, it should be a last resort only adopted when all other possible analyses have been exhausted. I have already explained this.

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As noted above, this is your latest strawman argument. Have you stopped beating your best friend? I recognize that many rival theories exist, the question is which theory is best at explaining the evidence.

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It is not a straw man argument; if that were true, your various attacks on the running ape model and my comprehgension of sexual selection would be senseless. You have manifestly attempted to deny that the running ape model is worthy of consideration; you have asserted without qualifications that it is BLOCKED by sexual selection, necessarily assiming the validity of sexual selection thereby. I have nbot ever enagegd with you in an argument in defencd of the actual reality or truth of the running ape model becuase I am well aware I am not competent to advance such a claim.

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Bait? BAIT? The proposition was to discuss the different theories like adults, first by ensuring that each fully understood the other theory, and then comparing predictions with observed results to see where that leads us in understanding human evolution. If you can think of a more adult way to approach this issue then by all means suggest it: I am always willing to learn new things.

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Yes, bait - it was completely manipulative, attempting to hold me to a process and methodology with which I am totally unfamiliar. It was an overt attempt to bait me on to ground of your choosing where I can be destroyed at leasure, and I correctly declined that bait.Please note I have never done anything similar; even when arguiuing against McCarthyist slanders of communism, I have not suggested that I will only discuss matters if the other side adopts the
historical-materialist dialectical method and constructs its arguments accordingly.

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Or to pick up on an earlier {comment\suggestion} -- why should someone with long hair be chosen over someone without long hair purely as a marker for {past\current} fitness?

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Well by your own argument, the very question of "why" is irrelevant if this was produced by recursive sexual selection. There is no why.