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Upright and Hairless Make Better Long-Distance Hunters

“Stand up straight! And do something about that hair!” Annoying? Sure. But such parental advice may have made humans what we are today. Because our upright stance, and relative lack of hair, may have enabled our human ancestors to run far and fast enough to capture their prey. So say scientists in the Journal of Human Evolution. [Graeme D. Ruxton and David M Wilkinson, "Thermoregulation and endurance running in extinct hominins: Wheeler’s models revisited"]
“站站好！你那頭發(fā)該修理修理了！”聽(tīng)著反感么？必須的。但也許正是這樣的嘮叨成就了今天的人類(lèi)。人類(lèi)的站立姿態(tài)以及長(zhǎng)度適宜的頭發(fā)有利于人類(lèi)祖先跑得夠遠(yuǎn)夠快來(lái)獵食?？茖W(xué)家們?cè)凇度祟?lèi)進(jìn)化雜志》上發(fā)表了這一觀點(diǎn)。

The idea that standing on two legs and shedding all that body hair might have helped early humans keep cool on the African savanna was first trotted out in the late 1980s. But those early models had our ancestors standing still in a gentle breeze. Scientists simply didn’t have the computational power to assess what might happen when those early humans had to up and chase down a meal.
站立姿態(tài)以及體毛的去除有助于生活在非洲熱帶草原的早期人類(lèi)防暑降溫，這一觀點(diǎn)早在20世紀(jì)80年代末就提出來(lái)了。但早期對(duì)人類(lèi)祖先的研究仍很模糊，科學(xué)家無(wú)法測(cè)算出早期人類(lèi)在追捕獵物的過(guò)程中會(huì)發(fā)生什么。

The new model takes into account how hot a human would get running long and hard enough to outlast an animal galloping in the midday sun. And it shows that a hominin would have to have been as energetically efficient, and as hairless and sweaty, as we are today to avoid overheating. Homo erectus could probably have gone the distance, the scientists say. But Australopithicus probably didn’t have the legs.
新模型將正午烈日下，人類(lèi)在漫長(zhǎng)艱辛追捕獵物的過(guò)程中會(huì)產(chǎn)生多少熱量。結(jié)果顯示，未免過(guò)熱，祖先們的精力、毛發(fā)、汗液都和我們現(xiàn)在一樣?？茖W(xué)家說(shuō)，直立人應(yīng)該已經(jīng)走得夠遠(yuǎn)了，但南猿恐怕就沒(méi)那個(gè)福分咯~

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