Most mammals seem fine with shorter hair (usually denser though). The only other case that comes to mind of very long hair restricted to a specific body area is that of horses manes, which to be fair I’m also not totally sure what purpose it serves. Many equines seem fine with shorter manes and tails that don’t have such long hair, like zebras. They swish flies away all the same.
Some animals have long hair but it covers most of their bodies (like llamas or yaks maybe), it’s not restricted to a small area. Other animals have denser or longer hair in some areas, like lions, but this serves a purpose (protection of the neck and head) and even then the length ratio between these longer hairs and the rest of the fur isn’t as skewed as that of humans.
So, why? I get that hair on the head helps protect it from the elements and sun, but why so long? Some humans can grow hair longer than their own body length, which is remarkable, and without doing any fact check I’d say we are probably among the top 5 species with longest hairs ever. Is it just a showoff feature like a peacock’s tail feathers, an indicator of overall health? Or does it serve another function as well?
I didn’t mean to type this wall of text…, thanks for coming to my TED talk
This reminds me of something I’ve been wondering about for a while now - burning hair has a distinct and very strong smell. That makes sense - if your hair is on fire, you want to know ASAP. My question is whether our hair evolved to have something in it that produces this smell, or if we just evolved to be particularly receptive to the smell of burning keratin.
That is of course ignoring the boring answers: “A little bit of both” and “It just worked out like that randomly”, as well as the best answer “Wait, that’s what that smell is?! Oh shit, you’re right, I’m burning! AAAAAAAA!!!”