Aside from it causes body odor and unpleasant physical appearance? Anyone knows other effects? e.g. on the skin? irritations?
There are many possible disease processes that happen because a hair follicle exists.
There are many advantages to having hair in the first place.
From Keratin.com:
"Clearly there are advantages to having hair on some regions of our body. Eyebrows protect the eyes from sweat and sun glare. Eyelashes protect the eyes by sweeping away dust and debris. Nasal hairs trap dust before reaching the lungs. These sites of terminal hair growth have probably been maintained to keep these advantages.
Scalp hair does give us one advantage of trapping heat. One third of our heat loss is through our scalps so terminal head hair does have a practical action. However, this does not explain why it should grow so long. There are two hypotheses based on evolution to explain long head hair. 1) Many animals have “manes” as sexual attractant signals or to increase their apparent size during sexual contests. Some feel this was a factor in human evolution. Cotton top tamarins may be an example with their extensive, white, billowing hair that frames their small face. Mature male gorillas develop a gray “silver back” appearance that reflects their status in the group. 2) It has also been suggested that through human evolution infants needed something to hold onto while being carried by the mother. Long head hair would serve such a function. Note there is no real evidence in support of any hypothesis.
What are the adaptive advantages of a lack of hair in animals?
The primary function of hair is for thermoregulation. Elephants and rhinoceroses are large animals which have very low surface area to volume ratios, and live in warm climates, and have no need of hair to keep warm. In contrast the woolly mammoth, had lots of long hair and was adapted for cold climates. Other mammals with little hair might include hippos, whales, the naked mole rat, and manatees/dugongs. The whales have low surface to volume ratios, insulating blubber, and presumably have eliminated most hair to cut down on drag in the water. Technically they do still have hair. The filters they use to collect food are keratin based and grow from highly modified hair follicle-like structures. Manatees live in warm coastal tropical waters and have no need for hair. The mole rat lives in a hot climate and stays underground pretty much all the time.
Some domestic animals such as pigs or pets such as the sphinx breed of cats have very little hair. It is either short or sparse. These strains have been selectively bred and their wild ancestors clearly have plenty of hair. Once domesticated these animals can look to humans to provide artificial heat sources in compensation for their lack of hair.
In hot climates the ability to easily dissipate heat is important for survival. A lack of hair allows reduction in drag for aquatic animals. Professional swimmers sometimes shave exposed skin including their scalps to give them reduced drag when swimming. It does not make that much difference in their speed but it may be just enough to make the distinction between a gold and silver medal in a competition.
Would it be possible to alter my follicles, by use of some genetic or ingested means, to very curly and flattened?
Straight hair fiber comes from straight hair follicles with a circular cross section. Curly hairs come from curly hair follicles that have a flattened cross section. There are some cases of people with one hair follicle type having a change to the other hair follicle type and so changing from straight hair to curly hair or vice versa. Sometimes these changes come about after an illness or temporary hair loss from telogen effluvium or alopecia areata. A few people have developed kinked hair while using the drug etretinate (a vitamin A derivative). However, what actually causes this change in hair fiber production from straight to curly is not known and to my knowledge has not been researched in any way.
The short answer is there is no known treatment to alter straight hair follicles to curly ones or vice versa. The only option is a cosmetic salon procedure to chemically perm the hair fiber into the required shape. Of course the perm procedure would have to be repeated every two months or so to maintain the curly hair."
So, hair does serve a function or we and our animal friends wouldn’t have any in the first place.
hi dhafey thanks for this! very helpful… but for some, it’s their belief about hair specially in the private parts such as underarms and pubic parts… said it causes some odor.
thanks again. 