Climate change.
When "humans" were first evolving, we came from jungle areas, as do chimps and gorillas.
There was a great deal more moisture in the air, and able to support the vast stretches of jungles.
As the climate cooled and formed ice in some areas, it made other areas (Africa) dryer. Savana landscapes began to take over.
Jungle forests began to shrink, eventually becoming little islands of forest, no longer conected to each other, and then vanishing altogether.
The compition in these shrinking jungle forests became extreme. Gorillas, chimps, humans, and many other ape ancestors were all competeing for dwindling resources.
Humans learned to take advantage of life on the open savanah. Besides learning to walk upright, and talk, one of our evolutionary advantages was to loose our fur, and develop all of our sweat glands. Those sweatglands served to keep us cool in the hot sun. With our ancestors dark skin, and lack of fur, we were well suited for live on the open savanah.
Animals like the big cats mostly hunt at night, when it's cooler. They also hunt in prides, with no one animal expending so much energy they become overheated. Hence lions get to keep their fur.
For cheetas this is a problem. They DO expend so much energy, AND become overheated that they have to rest and pant (their way of cooling themselves) many minutes after making a kill. Because they hunt durning the day, and often overheat themselves, they very often loose their kill to other predators. Lions, lepoards, and hyenas move in and steal the kills from the exsausted cheetas. Cheetas would naturally become extinct over time, even without mans intervention...they are simply not well suited, and cannot compete efficently with other predators.
Almost all the predators are pack hunters, with only one animal running for a burst of speed/time, or ambush predators (like the leopard) so they expend little energy getting hot. Fur affords them better protection against thorn, prey animals, and fighting rivals for mates than naked skin filled with sweat glands.
The prey animals keep fur for the same reason. Protection against the thorns, rivals, and somewhat against predators. Some animals, despite all their fur, are able to sweat quiet well, like zebras. Most animals covered with fur do not have the abundant sweat glands (domestic dogs only sweat on the bottom of their feet for example). Prey animals for the most part are just walking around eating. They live in herds, sometimes vast herds.
They depend on the saftey of numbers to keep themselves from being eaten, or having to run very far and overheat. That is the object of the predators...run the prey animal until it overheats, and becomes exsausted.
So it was evolution. It just happened that it worked for us to be naked and filled with sweat gland. There are a few other "naked" animals too, like elephants, rhino, and hippos.
If we were naked and covered with sweat glands, it allowed us to search for food in the heat of the day, when most predators were napping in the shade. That kept us safe. Then we could retreat to safer areas and try to keep out of the jaws and claws of predators during the cooler hours when the predators come out.
~Garnet Homesteading/Farming over 20 years Avid intrest/study of evolution since early childhood.
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