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Have you ever wondered why you don't have thick hair covering your whole body like a dog, cat or gorilla does? Humans aren't the only mammals with sparse hair. Elephants, rhinos and naked mole rats also have very little hair. It's true for some marine mammals, such as whales and dolphins, too. Scientists think the earliest mammals, which lived at the time of the dinosaurs, were quite hairy. But over hundreds of millions of years, a small handful of mammals, including humans, evolved to have less hair. What's the advantage of not growing your own fur coat? I'm a biologist...

Humans are the only mammals with long hair on their heads. Scientists look into what drives this unique feature. Humans evolved long hair on their head to prevent overheating and excess water loss when walking under the hot sun in Africa. iStock, Delmaine Donson In 2004, a Chinese woman named Xie Qiuping won the Guinness World Record for the longest human scalp hair at 5.627 meters—the length of an adult male giraffe! While this is an anomaly, humans are the only mammals that have negligible body hair, but extremely long hair on their heads. “It's such an important part of...

Humans are basically aquatic mammals (Elaine Morgan...); that means, amongst other things, that many if not most places on Earth where humans have lived in the remote past might now be under the waves as is the case with the Yonaguni ruins off of Okinawa. Having a sense of smell no better than humans possess would be fatal for any land prey animal. Notice however that aquatic mammals do not really require much of a sense of smell. Elaine Morgan listed a hundred or so traits1which we share with other aquatic mammals but there are a few which stand out:...

It is one of the most unusual evolutionary ideas ever proposed: humans are amphibious apes who lost their fur, started to walk upright and developed big brains because they took to living the good life by the water’s edge. This is the aquatic ape theory and although treated with derision by some academics over the past 50 years, it is still backed by a small, but committed group of scientists. From next Wednesday through Friday, they will hold a major London conference when several speakers, including British naturalist and broadcaster, David Attenborough, will voice support for the theory. “Humans are...

In the two-hour CGI Special “Mermaids: The Body Found,” Animal Planet dives deep into the idea that mermaids may have been real, and, even better -- related to humans! “It’s a very radical theory on human evolution, but we have approached an age-old myth and really chased its origins,” Animal Planet honcho Charlie Foley told FOX411’s Pop Tarts column. “It has been compiled in a way that is very compelling, making us think that mermaids might not just be mythical creatures.” The show unravels mysterious underwater sound recordings and presents a bone-chilling argument for the Aquatic Ape Theory, which suggests...