Hey, Vsauce. Michael here.
Why do humans wear clothing?
Sure, we need it for protection from the elements and fashion,
to show our personalities,
but no other animal makes and wears clothing.
More importantly, why do we feel embarrassed to be naked around other people?
The word "embarrassed" comes from
the Portuguese route,
"embaraça", which means to entangle or entwine.
And feeling embarrassed often feels like being tied up or exposed.
But how can a healthy
amount of embarrassment be a sign
that you are likeable,
forgivable
and trustworthy.
This t-shirt and hoodie
come from the YouTube Space LA,
which opened in November of 2012.
But clothing
has been around a lot longer than that,
for at least
the last 100,000 years.
Clothing protects us from the cold,
from rain, from the Sun
and it can also be an ornament.
A way of accentuating certain parts of our bodies or showing off wealth,
status.
It can even help us build
our own identities. But today I'm interested in another use of clothing,
modesty.
Why are humans
afraid to be naked?
Why are we ashamed of nudity?
Especially because animals pretty much walk around naked
all the time.
Why aren't animals embarrassed to be naked?
Well...
Let's take a closer look at embarrassment.
Embarrassment is a fascinating emotion and
an extremely social one.
You don't ever really ever feel embarrassed alone, when no one's watching you or
listening to you. So,
embarrassment probably evolved because it is such a good influence on social
cooperation.
We feel embarrassed when we violate little
social rules of conduct and each of us individually hoping to avoid that,
to avoid embarrassment, has helped all of us live together better.
Healthy brains experience embarrassment.
Neurodegeneration of the frontal and temporal lobes
can lead to less
awareness of yourself.
So a healthy amount of occasional embarrassment
is a good thing.
It's a sign of a socially adept
and normally functioning brain.
A famous experiment involved participants
watching an actor
receive
praise for achieving a very very high score
on an exam.
In some cases
the actor was told to feign pride in the achievement. And in others,
they acted
embarrassed to have attention put on themselves.
Later,
the actors and the participants played games together
and the participants were more pro-social,
friendly and cooperative
with actors who earlier expressed embarrassment.
It's suggested that the actor was to be trusted, that they desired to
fit in and work together.
Now, the fact that embarrassment displays our knowledge of others and our desire
to be liked
may explain why evoking embarrassment in others, whether it be flirtation or
playful teasing, is so common
when we kind of like the other person.
Shame is a stronger emotion. And shame, when it comes to
our private parts, the kind nearly every society - western or not - shares to some
degree is related to the root of our question today,
modesty.
Havelock Ellis' writing on the evolution of modesty
is a big antiquated when it comes to vocabulary, but he discusses quite well
two possible reasons for our fear
of nakedness,
both of which predate clothing and are not unique to humans.
The first
is the vital phenomenon of
refusal.
Before mating, many animals play a game of
chase,
hard to get,
a game of acceptance and then flight,
forcing the pursuer to
keep up
and prove their determination before being chosen
as a desirable mate. So,
when it comes to humans, we can think of clothing,
paradoxically, as both a means of
drawing attention to one's body
and simultaneously
as a way to
cover the body
modestly,
making us less available to every and any potential mate,
rendering
breeding more selective.
Ellis also mentions the fear of evoking disgust. And it's easy to see why
individuals of a species, who avoid things we consider disgusting, would survive better.
Fecal material, waste, rubbish, other bodily secretions can spread disease.
For instance,
animals whose poop likely contains dangerous parasites avoid grazing around
or hanging out around
their waste.
Habits like that lead to more sanitary conditions
and a species more likely
to survive. It's a satisfying piece of evidence as to why clothing once
invented was so quickly used to cover
private areas.
In 2009, the BBC investigated another influential factor -
raising children.
In species where the young are born pretty much ready for life,
it makes more sense to spend your time making babies,
as opposed to sitting around raising them. They don't need it.
Super precocial animals, like the megapode, hatch with full flight feathers
and can fly on their own within hours of hatching.
Human babies, on the other hand, are pretty darn altricial. We are born
barely able to do much besides swallow food put directly into our mouths.
Newborns can't walk or talk or cook meals for themselves or drive
themselves to work.
It's ridiculous.
Why are human babies born so unready for life?
Why is so much development time still needed after human kids are born?
Well, one explanation is that it's because we are so brilliant.
Brain size is correlated with the body size. Bigger bodies require bigger brains.
The shrew has a smaller brain than a human, but us humans have smaller brains
than wales. Of course, a bigger brain is not indicative of
intelligence.
For one thing, larger animals literally just have more cells they need to worry
about
and control.
What matters more when it comes to intelligence is the proportion
of brain size to body size.
Compared to the size of our bodies,
our brains are gigantic, they're outliers,
they're off the charts.
It's crazy. And a consequence of this is that in order to to have a brain, as big
as ours,
come out of a mother, as small as
a human, we have to come out with brains that aren't fully formed. Brains and heads
that aren't as big as they will eventually grow to be. And this is why human
babies require so much care and so much time to develop before their brains are
ready for them to go off
on their own.
Under this theory, being naked and mating all of the time
might be a little bit less of a priority for humans.
Humans and societies that privilege modesty
would have more time and resources to put toward raising children
and avoiding extra mates, instead of just conceiving
more kids,
allowing kids to develop properly and reproduce themselves.
Clothing serves this purpose quite well.
It conceals the privates and allows more time to be spent on other
things.
Clothes,
clothing
may, in a way, actually be a consequence of our unique
intelligence.
So the next time you put on clothes,
keep in mind that one of the reasons you're not running out into the world
butt-naked
is because you have
such a big brain.
No matter how dumb
the clothing is that you're putting on,
it's a reminder that we
are smart.
And as always,
thanks for watching.
Kevin, thank you for joining me. Thanks for having me.
I hear
that there is an insect wing that can naturally shred bacteria.
That's right. I talk all about that and other mind-blowing things over on Vsauce2 in the
new episode of
of Mind Blow. Alright, well, let's go over there and watch it. In fact, you guys can come
with us too. Click this annotation
or the link at the top of the description
for Mind Blowing number 60. I hope to see you there. Let's go.