Simply Sue: Monkey Business
Chimpanzees have naturally neat coiffures. Gorillas never need to go for a short back and sides. So why, Sue Papworth muses, should allegedly superior human beings have to spend so much time taking care of their hair?
Why does the theory of evolution not explain about hairdressers?
That’s the real missing link.
If you think of a documentary on the citizens of Britain wandering about their native streets and a set of apes wandering their native jungle, there will be no prizes for guessing who have the tattier hairdos.
Chimpanzees have neat coiffures quite naturally. Gorillas never need to go for a short back and sides. Orang utans are seldom seen in heated rollers.
I think.
But despite the lack of scissors, sprays and mousses in the smarter end of the average rainforest, none of them seems to get scruffy. Their hair doesn’t get in their eyes or crawl off down the back of their collars, or stand, despite all calls of gravity, on end.
Whereas if I was swinging through the trees in hot pursuit of a banana sandwich, I’d plummet to the forest floor pretty swiftly because my hair would drop across my eyes or get lodged behind my glasses. I have enough trouble crossing the street. Dammit, if the stuff isn’t regularly trimmed, or nailed pretty firmly back from the forehead, it’s all over my face the minute I step out of doors.
So why is it that human hair goes on growing relentlessly, whilst our cousins up a tree never have all that bother?
According to the survival of the fittest idea, we evolve by coming up with something more useful than the next species, like thumbs, or a larynx that can talk, or a bigger brain. But what earthly use is stuff that keeps sprouting out of the top of your head, obscuring your vision, requiring more attention than the hedge, and then falling out and bunging up the plug ‘ole?
I can’t stop wondering what possible advantage it gives us over lesser species to have stuff on the head that needs specialists to keep it in order. OK, so chimpanzees groom each other, but they probably don’t ask each other if they’re going somewhere special or if they’ve had their holidays yet while they’re at it. Or reduce each other to hysterics by the end product.
It’s got me stumped.
But then again, maybe if we didn’t spend so much of our time preening and plaiting the stuff, thinking up cures for baldness, and swearing as we unjam the hoover, we’d have more time to get into even more trouble as a species than we already do.
