The Story of Human Hair

Why do humans have most of our hair on our heads, not our bodies? Why do we have so many varieties of hair color, thickness, and curliness? Dr. Tina Lasisi is a biological anthropologist whose work explores these evolutionary mysteries. In this episode, she shares her research into why humans have scalp hair as well as her insights on why curly hair is uniquely human. Links to learn more: Dr. Tina Lasisi's website Why Am I Like This? - PBS Terra series Dr. Lasisi's AMNH/Leakey Foundation SciCafe lecture Why Care About Hair? Leakey Foundation event Quantifying variation in human scalp hair - research paper Origin Stories is a project of The Leakey Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to human origins research and education. Donate to support the show. Your gift will be quadruple-matched! Click here to give ! This episode was produced by Ray Pang. Our editor is Audrey Quinn. Theme music by Henry Nagle, additional music by Blue Dot Sessions and Lee Roservere.

You can listen to The Story of Human Hair online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

The Story of Human Hair is an episode from Origin Stories by Meredith Johnson.

This episode is 35:27 long.

This episode was published on Apr 30, 2024.

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