13 Scientific (And Occasionally Gross) Facts About Your Body Hair

Everyone grows body hair differently. Some guys can grow beards, some guys go bald. Some women have mustaches. You're born into the world, and from there, it's kind of a crapshoot as to how much hair you do or don't grow. Maybe it's thick, maybe it's thin, maybe it's fine, maybe it's curly. Not to mention cultural norms and beauty standards vary widely, leading to, say, pride in your beard or self-consciousness about the lion-like mane on your back. And very much not to mention a certain Oscars moment in which hair was both joked about and argued over. That discourse is…for another day. 

Instead, we're here to dive into the total weirdness that is body hair. Obviously, we want to provide the most rigorously sourced scientific research we can find, but it is gonna get a little gross. For instance: it might look like great apes are way more hairy than us … but they’re really, really not. Here’s the full story, plus 12 others: