Clothing (evolution)

[Seyorni]

It occurs to me that humans are not completely unique in the clothing department. Other animals routinely coat themselves with mud, for example, and even the lowley shrew has ben observed using the skin of his last meal as a blanket.

[sandy whitelinger]

Originally Posted by Seyorni

Primates always been a very decorative taxonomic order. Flamboyant patterns, coifs, colors, swellings and hypertrophic structures are de rigeur among monkeys and apes.

Hominids found they could distinguish themselves and stand out even more by adopting individual decoration -- paints, jewelery, body modification, feathers and other articles of adornment. Some of these "garments" no doubt proved to be more than just cosmetically functional.

When hominids migrated East then North out of Africa they encountered climates that necessitated more insulation than these naked apes possessed naturally. Fortuitously, they were culturally pre-engineered to cope with the new challenge, and the fashion industry was born....

Yes but do they have any fasion sense?

[Seyorni]

Oh dear...
That's exactly the outfit I'd planned to wear out tonight.

[doppelgänger]

Originally Posted by Seyorni

It occurs to me that humans are not completely unique in the clothing department. Other animals routinely coat themselves with mud, for example, and even the lowley shrew has ben observed using the skin of his last meal as a blanket.

Some crabs and snails use other animals' shells for shelter too.

[MdmSzdWhtGuy]

Originally Posted by sandy whitelinger

Why do you suppose man is the only species that evolved to wear clothing?

I am gonna have to go with "Man is the only species that can operate a sewing machine."

My dog is a Min-Pin and he gets cold very easily. He needs to wear a shirt to walk out in the cold, but alas, he is not able to purchase or manufacture those shirts for himself, much as me would like to (I am guessing there, he actually hasn't voiced such concerns to me, to be fair.) So I am thinking the only evolutionary thing involved with the clothing issue is a frontal lobe, and opposable thumbs.

B.

[Autodidact]

I don't really know, but I'm guessing it's for the same reason that we're the only species communicating with each other by tapping on computers: bigger brains. Why do you ask?

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Originally Posted by sandy whitelinger

Moving south would have been an easier evolutionary vehicle.

We started out in warm climates. As humanity spread, its societies had two options:

- stay where they were, where the environment was ideal, but competition with other humans was high.
- move to other areas, where the environment is less ideal but the competition is lower.

If the effort involved in surviving and thriving in a crowded tropical paradise is great enough, a drab and cold, but less competitive, environment starts to look better and better.

[Seyorni]

I think the primary impetus for our migration out of Africa was Pleistocne drying and desertification.

[Jaiket]

Although I haven't looked into the evolution of hairlessness and the adaptivity towards clothing, I'm inclined right now to think it related to thermoregulation and our propensity for toolmaking. Do you find that implausible, Sandy?