Mad Kally

lol.. I left out the cream cheese vernix.

(there are a few wimps around here when it comes to medical stuff)

Amit Misra

Hey, frostymama, please accept my congratulations on the new baby, first!
(Strange that we've been discussing the fur rather than the features...)
No wonder "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" was sutch a catchy phrase.
Amit

8of9

frostymama,

Congratulations!

My first son was born at 37 weeks, and looked like a little monkey -- furry and skinny! The second was born at 39, and was less furry, and fatter.

Lanugo seems to disappear around the same time the fat starts to accumulate on the baby -- I think they call it "brown fat" for some reason.

Apparently, people with severe anorexia develop lower than normal body temperature and also grow lanugo (although I'm not sure how similar it is to the newborn lanugo). Maybe the human body has this emergency plan (it's getting cold, grow some fur!), and clicks it on in utero as a backup plan for premature birth.

edited to include
I'm not sure why you don't think it could be a throwback to furrier ancestors ... is it because we shed and start over and chimps don't?

I just read that
Cool!

FoE

So how would someone go about intentionally having a super monkey baby? I'm certain my girlfriend will be interested.

abe smith

Good on yez, Frosty mama! If all you have to worry about with a new baby is its going-to-fall-out-anyway birth-pelt, hey! bravo! Everything else must be FINE! ( You really getting enuf SLEEP, Tootsie? What a miracle THAT is! )
Tell your (sillily) anxious womenkin to settle back and stop finding fault w/ your beautiful little newborn! They-women are just jealous; that's all. All older women want to boss-over all new mothers to prove how much-more EXPERT they are. The foregoing sentence is a totally-impermissible stereotypical generalization.
PUT them to work: Ask them to make you some grub to keep in your freezer, if they have so much worrytime on they hands.

Amen-Moses

Yes, as far as I know all our fellow primates (which almost exclusively live in tropical environments) are born with the follicles that they continue with whereas we seem to have a two stage follicle production regime triggered possibly by either a cooler environment or even possibly buy a change in diet (which may indicate an environment change).

Personally my first two children were premature twins and both were initially covered in hair. Strangely enough they lost it within a few days but they were in a temperature controlled environment, maybe if the temperature had been reduced somewhat they would have kept it longer? I wonder if anyone has done any studies in this vein.

Amen-Moses

8of9

This is an interesting article on Hair. One quote:
BTW, the quote in my previous post was from an article about "Werewolf Syndrome"

I'm still thinking that lanugo, and hair in general is, if not a throwback, a very real indicator of our close relation to other species.

I'm not a biologist -- I'm a Financial Analyst. So I will totally knuckle under if you tell me I'm wrong. I really like learning new stuff.

Primate Solidarity!

Amen-Moses

Cool, I didn't realise that. OK so it doesn't have a function then unless as proposed earlier it helps with the delivery, but if that were so then I would have thought it would be retained until delivery whereas it only seems to appear in pre-terms.

I wonder if Marsupials grow short term hair in order to travel to the pouch and then lose it in the second stage of development? That could indicate a function for it (although I'm pretty sure from wildlife documentaries that they look hairless on the journey maybe they are covered in a fine hair?).

Amen-Moses

Mad Kally

First you and your girlfriend have to have hot monkey sex..

One of the last sane

Congrats on your new baby, even if the kid does look like a chimp right now. My younger son looked like a baby orangutan when he was newborn. Rusty red fur all down his back. Price I paid for marrying a redhead I guess.