It's quite "bald". It turns out that you are not the only one who is bald, they are also bald

Spring is the season with the most hair loss in the year. The dry climate and ultraviolet rays make the hair brittle, dry, and break easily, especially in March and April when hair loss is the highest.

Image source network

In fact, it's not just humans who are bald. Animals also become bald. Some, like humans, become bald due to aging and work. But for other animals, baldness may be an advantage for survival and reproduction.

Scavenger birds: Baldness has many benefits

Scavenger birds, such as vultures, marabou storks, and Egyptian sacred ibises, feed on rotting animal carcasses. In order to eat the carrion and internal organs, they need to put their heads and necks deep into the belly of the carcass, so the tops of their heads are basically bald or have only very short hairs (which is no different from being bald), so that carrion and bacteria are not easy to stick to their heads, and they can also use sunlight to kill bacteria . So after a long period of evolution, baldness has gradually formed a stable gene that has been passed down from generation to generation .

Vulture Image Source: China Science Expo

Some scientists also believe that baldness can help them regulate their body temperature. Most birds have feathered areas and featherless areas. The featherless areas are important channels for birds to dissipate heat. Unlike other birds, they do not need to lift their feathers to expose the bare areas to the air. The bare heads of scavenging birds are in direct contact with the air, which is very convenient for dissipating heat and regulating body temperature.

African marabou stork Source: Shanghai Wild Animal Park

Bald people are more popular with the opposite sex

As my country's national bird, the red-crowned crane is tall and slender, standing 1.5 meters tall and with a wingspan of up to 2.5 meters. When flying in the air, it looks very fairy-like.

But the "cranes" on earth are bald, but baldness does not affect their appearance at all (the African marabou stork above is not so lucky, even with model-like long legs, its appearance is hard to describe). For them, baldness is still a "rite of passage."

Red-crowned crane image source: documentary "Born in China"

When they are chicks, they are not bald, their bodies are light yellowish brown, and the down feathers on their heads are very dense.

However, after two or three months, the red-crowned crane will begin to lose its hair. This cycle will last for about one or two years until the age of four, when the red-crowned crane will become completely bald. At this time, it can court the opposite sex and reproduce offspring under a "red sun".

Moreover, the larger and redder the bald area is, the healthier the man is and the easier it is to attract females.

Red-crowned crane image source: Photo Network

Like the red-crowned crane, the red-crowned monkey living in the tropical rainforest of the Amazon River Basin in South America also relies on its baldness to win in the love field.

The top and face of the red bald monkey are not covered with hair, and the complexion is bright red. If the male red bald monkey's head is balder and redder, it means that his hormone level and physical fitness are better, and he is more favored by females, and the chance of having a baby monkey with the opposite sex is greater.

Red bald monkey Image source: Ocean/Corbis

They also become bald due to the midlife crisis

The short-tailed macaque is an animal that lives in rocky subtropical mountain evergreen broad-leaved forest belts. In my country, it is mainly distributed in the southwest, the South China region south of the Nanling Mountains, and southern Fujian. It is a second-level key protected wild animal in my country.

Their faces are red and their tails are very short, only one-tenth of their body length, and their fur is sparse, so they are also called "broken-tailed monkeys". Their foreheads are partially bare and hairless, and they are almost completely bald, gray-black, and the hair on their cheeks is also sparse.

Short-tailed macaque Image source: Dalian Natural History Museum

Like humans, the hair on their heads thins as they age.

They show early signs of hair loss at around 4 years old, which corresponds to the expiration of sexual behavior. As they age, hair loss becomes more and more serious. Studies have found that short-tailed macaques can be more than half bald by the age of 7 (their 7 years old is equivalent to about 25-30 years old in humans). It seems that short-tailed macaques are more bald than humans.

Hair condition of short-tailed macaques aged 4-7 years old, source: references

Because short-tailed macaques suffer from hair loss and baldness just like humans, and the cause of baldness becomes more severe with age, scientists use them as an animal model to study human baldness and test drugs on them in an attempt to regenerate hair in short-tailed macaques. Scientists successfully induced the regeneration of bald hair by topically applying minoxidil to the middle-aged short-tailed macaque in the picture above.

Of course, the effect is not that good, otherwise many bald young people would not be anxious about baldness.

Some animals also lose their hair due to stress and anxiety. In the UK, 97% of the spines on a hedgehog fell off. The local rescue center speculated that it was due to ear mite infection, and the spines on the body fell off in large areas due to cold and "excessive anxiety."

Bald Hedgehog Image Source See Watermark

It seems that baldness is a mixed blessing in the entire animal kingdom.

Image source network

Comprehensive from:

China Science Expo, Science Popularization China, Guokr, Discovery Channel, Shenzhen Zoo

References:

Uno H. The stumptailed macaque as a model for baldness:effects of minoxidil. Int J Cosmet Sci. 1986 Apr;8(2):63-71. doi:10.1111/j.1467-2494.1986.tb00432.x. PMID: 19460042.

Compiled by: Dang Min