17 ms·
Yeah, white primates are pretty weird. It only happened because a few migrated north into temperate Europe and Asia and lost their melanin a while ago.
by amanaplanacanal 5y ago
Yeah, white primates are pretty weird. It only happened because a few migrated north into temperate Europe and Asia and lost their melanin a while ago.
- xwdv 5y agoThey didn’t lose it. Lighter tones were more popular with potential mates and resulted in gradual whitening over time.
- wizzwizz4 5y agoRunaway sexual selection effects generally don't result in beneficial traits; reduced melanin is beneficial in less sunny climates, because cholecalciferol (so-called “Vitamin D₃”, even though it's not a vitamin) synthesis requires sun exposure. And yes, having less of something is correctly called “losing” it in the English language. That was not a correction.
- wizzwizz4 5y agoThis might be true of great apes, but of primates in general, no. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macaque https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macaque and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capuchin_monkey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capuchin_monkey, for instance.
- tartoran 5y agoIt would be fine for Black people too if the context was purely taxonomy and all people would be classified as primates. But that is not what happened here.