So Furless, So Cute

While at lunch yesterday, a friend told me that she had a guilty fondness for flat-faced Persian cats, which invariably make her laugh. We wondered about the evolutionary pressures such a whimsical preference could exert over time.

The discussion recalled to me the latest winner of the David Horrobin Prize for medical theory, sponsored annually by the journal Medical Hypotheses. Judith Harris-Rich, author of The Nurture Assumption and No Two Alike, proposed an explanation for the near-unique hairlessness of humans:

Harris' paper describes Stone Age societies in which the mother of anewborn had to decide whether she had the resources to nurture herbaby. The newborn's appearance probably influenced whether the motherkept or abandoned it. An attractive baby was more likely to be kept andreared.

Harris' theory is that this kind of parental selection may have beenan important force in evolution. If Stone Age people believed thathairless babies were more attractive than hairy ones, this couldexplain why humans are the only apes lacking a coat of fur.

One wonders, then, why hairlessness would be so attractive. Harris-Rich suggests that, because Neanderthals were both hairy and hunted by our ancestors, hairy babies would seem less appealing. I like to think that, as hairless babies must have seemed particularly weak and vulnerable, favoring them might have been a cry of existential defiance against a cruel and brutal world.

Or maybe naked babies were just funny.

Why aren't humans furry? Stone-Age moms could be the answer [press release]