what would be the evolutionary benefit to men either having or losing their body hair?

The benefits of going bald

Want to appear more intelligent, influential, educated and honest? Lose your hair.

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The Vikings used a balm of goose poo. The ancient Greek medic Hippocrates believed the best cure for baldness was really pigeon droppings, which he mixed with horseradish, cumin and nettles. One 5,000 year-sometime Egyptian recipe suggested blending the burned prickles of a hedgehog immersed in oil with honey, alabaster, red ochre – oh, and fingernail scrapings – and slathering the concoction liberally over the afflicted area.

For as long as men have had access to mirrors, they've been fretting near their scalps getting lonely. It was a detail obsession of Julius Caesar, who tried everything to get his hair dorsum; the wreath of honour he wore was less a nod to Roman tradition than an endeavour at covering up his shiny pate.

By the time he met Cleopatra, he was almost completely bald. In a terminal ditch attempt to relieve his mop, she lovingly recommended a abode remedy of ground-upwardly mice, equus caballus teeth and acquit grease.

Alas, it didn't piece of work. He lost his pilus like many great men before and since, including Socrates, Napoleon, Aristotle, Gandhi, Darwin, Churchill, Shakespeare and Hippocrates – who, despite the pigeon droppings, was and so bald he even has a blazon of alopecia named after him. Somewhen Caesar began growing his hair longer at the dorsum and combing these strands forwards beyond his head, a technique which was optimistically described as "illusion styling". At present it's known equally the comb-over.

Charles Darwin fits the perception of baldheaded men equally intelligent, high-status and influential (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Thousands of years afterward, nosotros've moved on from garlands and revolting concoctions to expensive creams, tonics and shampoos, and last resorts of toupes, pills and surgery. Today you can attend a hair loss dispensary, sign up for hair-loss counselling and it'south not unusual to run across adverts telling balding men to "meet their medico". Papers discuss balding in epidemic terms, meanwhile the phenomenon even has a new scientific-sounding name, "androgenic alopecia". If y'all didn't know otherwise, y'all might think information technology was a medical status.

Accordingly, across the globe, we spend $3.5bn (£two.7bn) on baldness cures every year. That's more than the entire national upkeep of Macedonia or, as Bill Gates pointed out final year, significantly more than we spend on the control of malaria (just $200m (£154m) per year).

And what today's treatments lose out on in ingredients they make up for in unpleasant side-effects. Sales of the anti-hair-loss drug Propecia, which has been linked to impotence, hit a record high of $264m (£204m) in 2014. Pilus transplants, meanwhile, are notoriously bloody and have been known to brand grown men weep. Co-ordinate to a 2009 survey by the International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery, nearly 60% of men would rather have a total caput of hair than money or friends.

Take nosotros got it all wrong?

There's mounting show that blank heads aren't a spectacular evolutionary accident after all. Baldheaded men are seen every bit more than intelligent, dominant and high status; their shiny scalps may help them to seduce women or fifty-fifty relieve lives.

Before nosotros can get to grips with what makes balding so great, first we need to gear up the tape straight.

Contrary to popular wisdom – and the existence of super-manlike baldies such every bit Bruce Willis – the propensity to lose your hair doesn't make you any more of a man. Bald men are no more virile and they don't have higher testosterone levels, though they do tend to have hairier arms, legs and chests. Maybe most surprisingly, bald men don't actually take any fewer hairs on their heads.

Sir Patrick Stewart has been bald since he was 19 (Credit: Alamy)

For all the hysteria surrounding baldness, we have a long history of getting it wrong. Aristotle thought it was caused by sex. In ancient Roman times, an epidemic of smooth scalps in the military was blamed on the heavy metallic helmets worn past soldiers. Later theories included "dryness of the brain" – which was idea to pull the head abroad from the hair by making the brain compress – air pollution or, ironically, the wrong haircut.

Back in 1897, a wave of panic rippled beyond the globe later a French dermatologist announced he had discovered the truthful culprit: a microbe. Barbers and medical journals leapt to action, announcing that combs should exist boiled regularly and nether no circumstances should members of bald families use any combs or brushes other than their ain.

We now know that baldness is caused past a potent intermission-downwards product of testosterone, dihydrotestosterone (DHT). In the womb, the hormone plays an important function in the development of male person genitalia. In susceptible adults, it makes hair follicles shrink. As DHT works its magic the long, so-called "terminal" hairs on a human's head are transformed into short, soft "vellus" hairs like those on the heads of babies.

And since it'southward a product of testosterone, you might think more testosterone would equal more DHT and more than withered hairs. In fact you but need a tiny amount for balding to begin. What sets those with bare heads apart is the sensitivity of their hair follicles, which is inherited from their mothers.

The fact that it's inherited is crucial. By the fourth dimension they reach their 30th altogether – long before the end of their reproductive lifespan – 25-30% of men have some degree of hair loss. Not only that, only it happens all over the earth, in every single ethnic group. If beingness bald was so bad, information technology would have died out. The fact it is and then mutual might suggest information technology is useful, merely how? And if and then, why does it only happen to men?

"In general in nature when males have something that the females don't it means that characteristic is acting as a bespeak," says Frank Muscarella, a psychologist at Barry University. Back in the 1990s, this got him thinking.

Most of these "sexually dimorphic" features besides have something else in mutual. "They are usually associated with authorization and more reproductive opportunities," says Muscarella. In other words, baldness might be the human equivalent of a male peacock's ornate, brightly coloured tail. It might have evolved because information technology is attractive to women.

Sir Winston Churchill was renowned for his courage and dominance during the second world war (Credit: Getty Images).

Previous studies had shown that women exercise not observe bald men sexy, but this is probable to exist because bald men tend to be old, and – not surprisingly – women don't find old age highly-seasoned. "We know that women are attracted to men with high social status, so even if information technology's not physically attractive information technology may embed a kind of non-physical attractiveness," says Muscarella.

Before you ask, Muscarella doesn't have a vested interest in this theory. "No actually I'm not bald, I take a very practiced head of hair," he says.

In 2004, he decided to investigate on behalf of those who are less fortunate. To eliminate factors which might skew his results, Muscarella knew he'd need to improvise some bald men himself. Merely he knew he couldn't but photograph some men and edit their pilus out.

Instead Muscarella roped in a hairdresser friend – and they took a trip to the local wig shop. "I asked him to cut the hair on the wigs and so that one looked similar a full caput of pilus for a homo, i looked like it was receding and 1 looked similar it was baldheaded," he says. Men who go baldheaded naturally tend to retain some hair over their ears and around the back of the head, then they needed a wig fifty-fifty for the bald look.

After his friend had finished hacking the wigs to shape, Muscarella bought three plastic skullcaps and fastened the hair with Velcro. And then they asked 6 unfortunate students to try them on and took some photos. "Of class they looked absolutely horrible," he says.

Luckily his co-author had just caused some very, very archaic photograph editing software and then, pixel by pixel, they were able to erase the strong lines between the skullcap and the forehead and make the pictures look relatively normal.

Then they put their images to the test. He showed the images to 101 male person and 101 female psychology students and asked them to rate the men's attractiveness and aspects of their personality.

While the bald and balding men were not considered equally physically attractive as the other men, one category of scores was far higher. The men were consistently rated every bit more intelligent, influential, knowledgeable, well-educated, loftier social status, honest and helpful – traits collectively known every bit social maturity.

He speculates that baldness may have evolved as a signal of high social status – something some women discover irresistible. Intriguingly, bald men were also viewed every bit significantly less ambitious. "If y'all think about it, early human males would accept been running around completely naked and completely hairy, and then you lot can imagine a large shaggy head of hair, a large bushy moustache – all kinds of body hair – they would have been very kind of threatening looking," says Muscarella. Going baldheaded may accept been a way to divide mature, high-status men from hostile adolescents.

Though Salman Rushdie is better known for his writing than his looks, he married model Padma Lakshmi in 2004 (Credit: Alamy)

If that's the example, information technology's possible nosotros've been howdy-jacking this natural indicate for years already. As Muscarella points out, the shaven expect has been a hitting with philosophers, teachers and priests for centuries. Christian monks have taken this one footstep further – not only shaving their heads, simply doing and then in a way which directly mimics the way men go bald.

The finding is backed upward past numerous other studies. Across the globe, from workers on a remote sugar cane plantation in Brazil to Zambian high school students, balding men are overwhelmingly viewed as more than dominant. It even works on men who take only shaved all their pilus off.

There'south even some tantalising – admitting controversial – evidence that baldheaded heads may be life-saving.

For a long time, the reverse was truthful. It's long been known that men who tin't produce DHT, such as those who take been castrated, have healthy, flowing locks for as long as they live. Intriguingly, there are likewise no recorded cases of prostate cancer in this group.

DHT is responsible for the growth of the prostate gland in babies, and then it makes a lot of sense that it would also contribute to the growth of tumours in adulthood. Prostate cancer and baldness may exist underpinned past a shared hormonal sensitivity which runs in the family. This was confirmed earlier this twelvemonth with the discovery that balding men are more likely to develop aggressive prostate cancer, which is responsible for around 300,000 deaths every year.

It doesn't audio similar much of a silver lining – simply there'due south a twist. Low levels of vitamin D – which the body tin can merely produce when it'due south exposed to sunlight – is another known risk cistron for prostate cancer. And every bit any baldheaded man will tell you, they go a lot more lord's day exposure than the rest of us. Did baldness evolve to mitigate some of the deadly effects of DHT?

Final year Forbes ranked Lloyd Blankfein – who is the CEO and chairman of Goldman Sachs – every bit the 26th virtually powerful person in the world (Credit: Alamy)

"Tens of thousands of years ago in Europe it might have helped those individuals to receive more than UV radiation and produce more than vitamin D," says Peter Kabai from István University in Republic of hungary, who struck upon the thought when he began going bald. This would too explain why women don't get baldheaded, since they don't accept a prostate.

The testify is racking up. Men who work outdoors have amend odds confronting those who spend more time inside. That'south also true of those who have a tan, who were sunburnt as children, who live in warmer climes or who accept more holidays abroad. The result is and so powerful, even the flavor in which you're diagnosed makes a divergence: those diagnosed in the summer are less likely to die of their cancer.

"This all relates to vitamin D – in which most people are deficient," says Kabai. The final strand of proof comes from a clinical trial published last year. Xxx vii men with prostate cancer were either given a vitamin D supplement (nearly vii times the recommended daily allowance) or a placebo.

Sixty days later, their prostates were removed. In the group which had been taking vitamin D, their tumours had shrunk. In the group which hadn't, they had got worse. The supplement as well inverse how key genes were expressed – turning off those involved in inflammation, which is known to contribute to the development of cancer.

In other words, balding men may be more susceptible to prostate cancer despite the fact that they are losing their hair, not considering of it; the baldness itself may be helping mitigate some of the hazard.

Information technology could as well clear up why the evidence is so confusing: a previous study institute that men who developed a receding hairline and bald spots before the age of 30 were upward to 45% less likely to develop prostate cancer later on on. "Some baldheaded men might prefer to clothing lid all the fourth dimension, while others might not. That deviation could be one source of ambiguities in such studies," says Kabai.

Then in that location you lot have information technology: going bald could help men get alee, get the daughter or go better. Perhaps it's fourth dimension to put the pigeon debris away and give bare heads the respect they deserve.

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Source: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160921-the-benefits-of-going-bald

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