Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
Speaker 1: from house Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, Chuck Bryant. How are you doing? Man?
Speaker 1: I am well, that sounded very unsure. Are you feeling
Speaker 1: the same way? Is it? Is it? Chuck and I
Speaker 1: are recording on a Monday. Jerry's forcing us to um.
Speaker 1: Usually we record on Fridays. It's the last thing we
Speaker 1: do in the week, which is why we're so chipper
Speaker 1: and up drunk and um. You know this is a
Speaker 1: this is a shift. It's different. Yeah, it's like a funeral.
Speaker 1: It's harsh or buzz plus, it's kind of um, cloudy
Speaker 1: out and the weather affects me. I have a sad
Speaker 1: seasonal effective disorder, do you really? Yeah, a little bit
Speaker 1: like diagnosed self diagnosed? Yeah? Are you also self medicating? Uh? No, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm not into that. Give for you, Chuck. Um, all right, Well,
Speaker 1: I have a question for you far away. Did you
Speaker 1: ever when you were a kid, did you have one
Speaker 1: of those little plastic shavers, little razors? Yes? Did you?
Speaker 1: Did you use it or did you just leave it around? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember getting into my dad's shave cream and playing
Speaker 1: around like I had facial hair. Me too, And now
Speaker 1: we do have facial hair. I know. It's kind of like, Um,
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, I when I was like seven,
Speaker 1: all I wanted to do was mow the lawn right
Speaker 1: more than anything else. And then come eight, I, um,
Speaker 1: I actually got to mow the lawn and the first
Speaker 1: three times were heaven, and after that I was like,
Speaker 1: you were such a chump. Yeah, the same thing was shaving.
Speaker 1: It was it was like really exciting, but now it's
Speaker 1: things just get kind of mundane after you do them
Speaker 1: a number of times. Huh. Yeah, I was pretty late
Speaker 1: to the late bloomer to the facial hair too. So
Speaker 1: later on in high school, like my friend Jim that
Speaker 1: you've met, Yes, he is of Arabic descent, And Jim
Speaker 1: literally had a mustache when he was like the eighth grade.
Speaker 1: It was one of the stin ones and he was
Speaker 1: he's a drummer in a band, and so he had
Speaker 1: a little like the mullet and the mustache. Yep, I
Speaker 1: knew I knew a kid like that to. His name
Speaker 1: was Ron. He was a Polish descent, and he actually
Speaker 1: his voice was deep in the third grade and his
Speaker 1: stash started coming around a little A little after that.
Speaker 1: I developed a little later. I'm still developing, are you?
Speaker 1: Your voice is still changing and it is very nice,
Speaker 1: Chuck sexy? Um, have you ever wondered, though, why? How
Speaker 1: about this first segrede. Have you ever wondered, Chuck, why
Speaker 1: humans even have body hair? I hadn't until I read
Speaker 1: this article, and then it kind of occurred to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's kind of weird. Why do we have hair? Actually?
Speaker 1: This is this isn't the this isn't the first time
Speaker 1: I thought of this. Yeah, did you think that when
Speaker 1: you were a little kid? No anthropology student? Okay, yeah
Speaker 1: I didn't. I wasn't down with anthropology. I remember how
Speaker 1: we were just talking about shaving the face. Did you
Speaker 1: know that you or I will probably spend about a
Speaker 1: month out of our lives. Uh, shaving less than that,
Speaker 1: but yeah, below average. I shaved. I shaved once a week.
Speaker 1: To God, we are made for each other. Wow, all right,
Speaker 1: well let's get to this all right? Yes? Why dose?
Speaker 1: Why why does your hair grow? The hair on your
Speaker 1: head grow longer than the hair on your arms, Chuck Bryant. Well,
Speaker 1: before we go there, Josh, we need to understand a
Speaker 1: little bit about hair. Can we go there? Uh? What
Speaker 1: happens is when you're talking hair growth, you have cells
Speaker 1: inside the hair follicles. They divide and they multiply, and
Speaker 1: then space fills up inside the follicle and it pushes
Speaker 1: older cells out because hair is actually just like the
Speaker 1: protein keratin and dead cells right that have hardened. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that sounds kind of gnarly when it is like that.
Speaker 1: Did you know like something like of all dust is
Speaker 1: dead skin cells? Really? Yeah, it's like bed bugs. Not
Speaker 1: to get off on another tangent, but all that stuff
Speaker 1: grosses me out. Never bring a black light into a
Speaker 1: hotel room. That's all I have to say. So, Uh,
Speaker 1: as space calls up, pushes the older cells out, like
Speaker 1: I was saying, and those cells harden and exit, the
Speaker 1: follicle informs a hair shaft, which you said is mostly
Speaker 1: dead tissue and keratin. Correct. So that's basically what's going on.
Speaker 1: But it happens in spurts. It rests, and it active
Speaker 1: in resting phases. So the the active phase, the growth
Speaker 1: phase is called the antigen phase. And then there's the
Speaker 1: telligent phase and those are resting phases. And it's strangely enough,
Speaker 1: these the your different parts of your body go through
Speaker 1: different phases at different times, which is what you're talking
Speaker 1: about with the arm in the head, right, So your
Speaker 1: arm hair has much longer telligen or resting phases than
Speaker 1: your hair head your head hair head hair, yes, which
Speaker 1: I usually just call hair, Which is why this is
Speaker 1: going to be a really confusing podcast, I know, because
Speaker 1: there's different types of hair on different parts of your body.
Speaker 1: So yeah, let's let's key about that right now. If
Speaker 1: we just say hair, we're talking about the head, the scalp. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: everything else is facial hair, arm hair. You know, there's
Speaker 1: a qualifier. But let's go ahead and get the different
Speaker 1: types of hair out of the way. Let's do it.
Speaker 1: What you have in the womb um are little tiny
Speaker 1: hairs called lenu goo. That's that's how I pronounced it.
Speaker 1: To pick it. Uh. Then after you're born, babies grow vellus,
Speaker 1: which is fine un pigmented hair. It yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: I just Yeah, little baby's heads are all soft. It's
Speaker 1: so cute there um, And then you hit puberty most
Speaker 1: of us and the vellus hairs give way to terminal hairs,
Speaker 1: and they're a little more coarse. And that's what you
Speaker 1: find underneath your armpits and around your genital area or
Speaker 1: on my back on shoulders, hairy back, Holy cow. Really yeah,
Speaker 1: I've never seen aim of your shirt off. I'm like
Speaker 1: class four or Robin Williams level of Harry. Wow, I'm
Speaker 1: not quite there. It's up there. Yeah, yeah, I'm not
Speaker 1: that bad. I have the creeper that come around the collar,
Speaker 1: but Emily um waxes me from time to time. My
Speaker 1: brother in law is shaved by my sister down to
Speaker 1: where the collar of his undershirt comes. And if you
Speaker 1: ever see him with this his shirt off, it's like hair,
Speaker 1: no hair. It's really hilarious, like the red nacktan kind
Speaker 1: of Yeah, that's nice. So then back to the hair
Speaker 1: that we all think about. The hair on the scalp,
Speaker 1: the thicker hair, eyebrows, eyelashes. That's also a terminal hair,
Speaker 1: which is the same as um, what a lot of
Speaker 1: people call pubic hair. Yes, it's actually the same type
Speaker 1: of hair. You might not think so, but it is.
Speaker 1: It's terminal. Okay, So, and then a different kind of hair,
Speaker 1: this is distribution, not the type of hair. Uh is
Speaker 1: androgenic and that's like your facial hair, your chest hair,
Speaker 1: your arm hair. And it's usually stimulated by um, the
Speaker 1: hormone testosterone. Right. So there you have and then you
Speaker 1: add all that up together, Josh, and you get about
Speaker 1: five million into visual hairs for an average adult, which
Speaker 1: is strange because that's about the same density as a chimpanzee.
Speaker 1: Did you know that I did? And this is where
Speaker 1: it gets a little more interesting. I'll let get all
Speaker 1: this science stuff, get all these terms out of the way. Um,
Speaker 1: now we're talking about chimps, and this is something that
Speaker 1: I did not know until I read this. Uh, we
Speaker 1: actually don't have uh fewer hairs than a chimpanzee. It's
Speaker 1: the size of the hair actual. Yeah, they're shorter and
Speaker 1: less coarse. So we have about the same number of
Speaker 1: hair follicles, or at least the same density of them
Speaker 1: as a chimp. Yeah. I bet no one would answer
Speaker 1: that unless they knew. No, but we could. Well, we
Speaker 1: should totally go to TRIVI to night And now the
Speaker 1: dozens of people who listen to our podcasts couldn't know
Speaker 1: that too exactly. Um, but we also on the chimps.
Speaker 1: We also share the same hairless parts, which is uh, lips, palms,
Speaker 1: and soles of the feet. No hair, My I have
Speaker 1: hair on my palms. Well, I'm not gonna go there. Hey, um, Josh,
Speaker 1: do we need to talk about some theories? Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is I like this. This is why I've thought about
Speaker 1: this before, because we were taught this kind of stuff
Speaker 1: in anthropology apology classic. Okay, so my favorite theory, this
Speaker 1: is the one that makes the most sense to me,
Speaker 1: is that we started losing our hair when we became bipeds.
Speaker 1: If you look at um most primates, they have a
Speaker 1: tendency to walk on their knuckles as well as their
Speaker 1: their feet, and that's how they move most quickly, which
Speaker 1: would require you have a lot of hair on your
Speaker 1: back because then that whole area is exposed to the
Speaker 1: sun exactly the whole point of hair. Well, actually there's
Speaker 1: two points, right. One is to regulate body heat to
Speaker 1: keep keep your body warm, sure, and the other is
Speaker 1: to protect from UV radiation from the sun. Okay, pretty cool.
Speaker 1: So once we started walking up right, we need a
Speaker 1: hair on our head, some of our shoulders, maybe a
Speaker 1: little on our back, some on the chest. Uh, and
Speaker 1: then you know everything else is kind of sexual, right, absolutely. Uh,
Speaker 1: I think about one third of our bodies are exposed
Speaker 1: to sunlight once we started walking upright, Right, That's the
Speaker 1: one that makes most sense to me. But that's pretty
Speaker 1: far from the only theories. What else you got, Well,
Speaker 1: there's another one I thought was kind of cool that
Speaker 1: um one theory was the early man was a water
Speaker 1: dwelling ape. So since they're in the water, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: you don't need hair on the water. You don't see
Speaker 1: a lot of hairy fish, no, nor hippopotami or rhinos
Speaker 1: or any elephants. Yes, it's been a lot of time there,
Speaker 1: and they're all mammals. They have very sparse hair growth, right,
Speaker 1: because they're in the water a lot. Absolutely, So I
Speaker 1: kind of like that one. Yeah, that one makes sense.
Speaker 1: The other one that makes sense to me is that
Speaker 1: about one point seven million years ago, we went from
Speaker 1: a basically a forest dwelling species to kind of moving
Speaker 1: more out in the open, right, And since we're in
Speaker 1: the forest, we would not be exposed to the sun
Speaker 1: as much, and it would be cooler because out of
Speaker 1: the sun, so we would need more hair to keep
Speaker 1: our our body temperatures higher. Right, once we move out
Speaker 1: into the open savannah, we don't need the hair anymore.
Speaker 1: Why do we move out? There? Was that when we
Speaker 1: started developing, and we always move for food. It's usually food.
Speaker 1: When is the basis of migration? That's all the good meat? Was? Yeah? Okay,
Speaker 1: So the thing is is if we lose our hair
Speaker 1: and we're now exposed to the sun, chuck. We still
Speaker 1: need to protect ourselves from UV rays, but we need
Speaker 1: to use a method that doesn't keep us hot. Right, sure,
Speaker 1: enter skin pigment. Okay, this news to me. Okay, so
Speaker 1: actually they have there there was this researcher in a
Speaker 1: two thousand doctor Rosalynd Harding and Oxford, and she went
Speaker 1: back and traced the evolution of the m C one
Speaker 1: our gene. This is the gene that produces either a
Speaker 1: dark pigment or a lighter reddish pigment depending on where
Speaker 1: we live in our exposure to the sun. They closely
Speaker 1: lived to the equator the darker pigment. And you're going
Speaker 1: to because it protects skin from sun cancer or skin cancer,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Sun cancer, like that sun cancer,
Speaker 1: it's the worst kind um. So Professor Harding or doctor Harding,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, traced the mutations on this gene as they're
Speaker 1: found in African populations, which, strangely enough, there are no mutations.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, there's no variation among Africans of this gene.
Speaker 1: And if you go and you look at Asians, you
Speaker 1: look at people of Nordic descent, Native Americans, they all
Speaker 1: we all have the m c one ur gene, but
Speaker 1: there's variations on it and Africans. It doesn't matter where
Speaker 1: you go on the African continent. That's you find the
Speaker 1: same exact gene with the same exact mutations, and that's
Speaker 1: the birthplace of humanity. Yes, many believe so, which I
Speaker 1: was also surprised we apparently only UM exited Africa within
Speaker 1: the last like fifty thousand years. I thought it was
Speaker 1: way further back than that, but I read an article
Speaker 1: in the New York Times. It's a different and they
Speaker 1: know sure UM. So anyway, Dr Harding traced the the
Speaker 1: evolution of this gene through mutations back to about the
Speaker 1: last time it swept through the African population, and she
Speaker 1: found that that was about one point two million years ago.
Speaker 1: Right now, the point of this is that when this
Speaker 1: gene when this mutation would have swept through. That's darkening
Speaker 1: everyone's pigment. Um, we would have needed it then, so
Speaker 1: for at least the last one point two million years.
Speaker 1: Dr Harding posits that we've been hairless. Cool. Huh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it all makes sense a love when it comes together
Speaker 1: like this, it all makes sense. But I also like
Speaker 1: biological and anthropological abnormalities that don't add up. I know
Speaker 1: you do. Let's hear about it. Well, now I don't
Speaker 1: have Well, are you talking about the hairy guys, the
Speaker 1: very hairy guys? Yeah, that actually wouldn't have set up,
Speaker 1: but I'll take it. Um. We are talking about hypertrichosis, which,
Speaker 1: um some people might have seen they called they're called
Speaker 1: the wolf people. I don't know if they call themselves that, well,
Speaker 1: they may not, but that's that's what they're called. In
Speaker 1: the research I've done, Victor Larry and Gabriel Danny Ramo
Speaker 1: Scummez are in a family of nineteen that spanned five generations.
Speaker 1: That's their name. No, No, a family of what a
Speaker 1: family of nineteen? Yeah, exactly, Um, well, last nineteen over
Speaker 1: five generations. There is bound to be some genetic mutations
Speaker 1: in a family of nineteen. Absolutely, so they all suffer
Speaker 1: from that rare condition. It's called generalized or congenital generalized
Speaker 1: hypertrichosis in their case. And basically what that means is
Speaker 1: a lot of body hair. We're talking of their body
Speaker 1: coming hair. I was looking at a picture that you have,
Speaker 1: and you can basically see their eyes, yeah, and around
Speaker 1: the lips, oh yes, and around the lips they look
Speaker 1: kind of like they're wearing hairy ski masks. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And is that they're one of their little siblings. It
Speaker 1: knows says it's one of their fans. Okay, they're taking
Speaker 1: a picture with one of their fans. And there's also
Speaker 1: a man in China named you uh xin Juan and
Speaker 1: his claimed fame. He has the same thing. It's called
Speaker 1: the harriest man in China, and hair covers ninety of
Speaker 1: his body and he is trying to become a singer
Speaker 1: apparently and make it big as a singer, which I
Speaker 1: thought was pretty cool. Yeah. I think the the Gomez
Speaker 1: Brothers have him beat big times well by two ye
Speaker 1: not much and um and you was actually made his
Speaker 1: entertainment debut at the age of six in a movie
Speaker 1: called A Hairy Child's adventure. So early on he felt
Speaker 1: like he was exploited somewhat, and I'm sure he was ashamed,
Speaker 1: but he's learned to live with it and now um
Speaker 1: kind of embraces it, which is kind of cool. A
Speaker 1: hairy child's adventure. I'm looking that one up. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: it's riveting. So that is hyper trichosis in a nutshell. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot more. Maybe we should do
Speaker 1: a full podcast on this is pretty interesting actually, but
Speaker 1: they you know, shaving, plucking, electrolysis, and laser removal. They
Speaker 1: are different cosmetic things you can do to to help
Speaker 1: that out, you know. Um, I also did a te
Speaker 1: bit of research on that, and you can there's an
Speaker 1: acquired version, there's genetic version, there's an acquired version, and
Speaker 1: through malnutrition you can you can develop this well, so
Speaker 1: your starvation diet you better watch out, buddy. That explains
Speaker 1: the hair on the back. Is it sprouting more and
Speaker 1: more lately? Yeah, it is, and it's getting kind of
Speaker 1: Billy goat esque. Yeah. I had a pet goat. Did
Speaker 1: you know that? They did not? It's good stuff. How
Speaker 1: is its hair growth pattern? Yeah? Of course goats are
Speaker 1: really great pets, actually very affectionate. Yeah, they are there. Um,
Speaker 1: they can cause some serious allergies though, Yeah, I didn't
Speaker 1: know that. You know you do now, So here's the
Speaker 1: you nestor my goat, Hey nestor, thanks for listening. You
Speaker 1: want to do one last thing? Sure? Okay, So what's
Speaker 1: the deal with growing hair and armpit hair? I mean,
Speaker 1: these places aren't exposed to the sun any longer they are.
Speaker 1: It's at like Camp Sunshine nudist resort, right you tell me.
Speaker 1: Camp Sunshine is actually a camp for kids with cancer,
Speaker 1: So I doubt that's not a new distro sword. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: well there's another word that you're thinking of. The there's
Speaker 1: there's no this this it's Camp Sunshine and upstate New York. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's that's funded by the same people. Strangely, you know
Speaker 1: it's awesome. Um. No, the the the the theory no,
Speaker 1: I guess hypothesis not a theory yet would be or
Speaker 1: behind why we have growin hair and aren't hair is
Speaker 1: because these places are um where we emit the most.
Speaker 1: Yes see, do you see where I'm demonstrating right here?
Speaker 1: Chuck up down here. Um, these are where we we
Speaker 1: produce the most pheromones and The hypothesis is that the
Speaker 1: hair acts as kind of like an amplifier for these
Speaker 1: pheromones it traps in the smells mind does interesting? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: what a grizzly topical. Christen Conger wrote this, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you go Conger. If you want to read it, you
Speaker 1: can type in why do humans have body hair? In
Speaker 1: the handy search part how stuff works dot com. Um. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we did that all right, So that's why do
Speaker 1: humans have body here? Right, Chuck? Yeah, I guess although
Speaker 1: you know, if we ever make it back into the water,
Speaker 1: prepared to go bald, right, And it's funny hair human
Speaker 1: head hair is become one of the more distinct features
Speaker 1: that you know, people have hair dues, and it's it's
Speaker 1: not it's a very cosmetic, cosmetic thing. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not just I mean, it's there for our to
Speaker 1: protect our head, but it's also to look cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what I'm trying to say. Get a mohawk maybe. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: let's let's plug something, Chuck, you you plug, Okay, I'll plug. Um.
Speaker 1: So let's plug the blogs. Chuck and I have a
Speaker 1: blog called stuff you Should Know appropriately Enough, and we
Speaker 1: just post about all sorts of cool stuff. Chuck does
Speaker 1: a podcast Goodness Round Up every Friday too, um and
Speaker 1: uh yeah, we post each once a day every day
Speaker 1: during the week and you can find it on the
Speaker 1: right rail on the homepage of how Stuff Works dot com.
Speaker 1: And there's our blog plug Perfect, which means sr mail
Speaker 1: Time Josh. Today, I'm just going to call this the
Speaker 1: Great Australian toad Wart Correction Cast. We missed quite a
Speaker 1: few things on this one. I'm not ashamed to admit
Speaker 1: that happens occasionally, and it happened this time. So here
Speaker 1: we go with corrections for the dow toads calls works.
Speaker 1: I see that part of it's been redacted, right because
Speaker 1: someone was wrong. They wrote in and said that toads
Speaker 1: were not in Perth. But I went back and listen,
Speaker 1: and you said that they were heading towards Perth, and
Speaker 1: I sent the guy linked to an article that verified
Speaker 1: that they are indeed heading towards Perth and are gonna
Speaker 1: make it there. So beyond that one, Josh, at one
Speaker 1: point you said there are no predators that have figured
Speaker 1: out how to eat the cane toad because of the
Speaker 1: toxins on its back. And apparently, uh Australian woman wrote
Speaker 1: in and said that crows have learned how to flip
Speaker 1: them over and attack the belly. Yeah, the cane toad.
Speaker 1: But that's an pleasant sensation, so thank you for that.
Speaker 1: We don't have names. I apologize about that, folks. I
Speaker 1: was short on time. We also mispronounced HPV, which is
Speaker 1: I know, go ahead and say the real world, hum,
Speaker 1: human peppioma virus, yeah right, yea, And we said Pavlova
Speaker 1: virus and that was my fault. As we all know,
Speaker 1: Pavlova is a dessert and it was a famous ballet dancer.
Speaker 1: And uh, you and I are both into eating dessert
Speaker 1: and watching ballet, so we probably at the same time too,
Speaker 1: So that was you know. I apologize about the mispronunciation. Josh.
Speaker 1: He said that there are alligators he said it kind
Speaker 1: of in a flip way in Australia. Not true, it's crocodiles.
Speaker 1: Were we drunk during there, No, we weren't. But the
Speaker 1: list cos on I mispronounced salasilic acid. I apologize about that,
Speaker 1: and that is the last correction, but we we should mention.
Speaker 1: A couple of folks wrote in and talked about ways
Speaker 1: to get rid of words that we did not know,
Speaker 1: and duct tape was the most uh well regarded. I
Speaker 1: mean a lot of people said, if you put duct
Speaker 1: tape on it and leave it for a little while,
Speaker 1: it will get rid of your work. How long is
Speaker 1: a little while? Did you get an impression? No? I
Speaker 1: didn't until the word goes away? Yeah, I would guess so.
Speaker 1: And then Chris from l A. He calls it Lower Alabama,
Speaker 1: which obviously think it's funny. He said breast milk and
Speaker 1: I haven't heard that one, so that is unverified, but
Speaker 1: that's what Chris says. Chris just may have the thing maybe,
Speaker 1: so yeah, so well, yeah, thank you for all those corrections.
Speaker 1: Do you want to get the oak Claire thing out
Speaker 1: of the way now, I'll go ahead. So, uh, it's
Speaker 1: not you Claire Wisconsin, it's l Claire Wisconsin and Wisconsin
Speaker 1: folks wrote in and said no, no, no, yeah, actually yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess we should say it's O clear wiscantin Wisconsin. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, thanks for everybody who wrote in to correct us. Um,
Speaker 1: whether you were correct or not. Uh, you know, if
Speaker 1: you mentioned Perth, that's okay. The ass he's loved it
Speaker 1: though they love hearing podcasts about themselves. We got a
Speaker 1: lot of good feedback right now, we'll have to do
Speaker 1: that a little more often. Yeah, okay, So if you
Speaker 1: want to send us any any words of encouragement, any
Speaker 1: words of derision, and anything at all, you can shoot
Speaker 1: an email to Stuff podcast at how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com For more on this and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Is it how stuff works dot com m HM brought
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