Like most mammals, people have hair over most of their bodies. We aren’t covered with fur all over our bodies like animals are, and scientists think that people today have less hair than primitive humans did. Because of the way that creatures change over time, humans born today have less hair than they did thousands of years ago. But scientists don’t really know why this is — having less hair probably didn’t make it easier for ancient humans to survive.

It’s possible that people decided long ago that humans with certain kinds of hair were just more beautiful, and so those kinds of humans had more babies that looked like them.

Although you have hair on most of your body, some of it is too fine to see. Two places where you don’t have any hair are the palms of your hands and the soles of your feet.

Do you notice that adult men usually have more hair on their bodies than women? Adult men grow hair on their faces and on their upper bodies, while women do not. It’s possible to remove hair from your body by shaving it off.

Children don’t have much hair on their bodies (except for the hair on your head, of course). But as you grow older, your body will gradually change and you’ll grow more hair on different parts of your body. By the time you finish high school, your body hair will look more like what you see on an adult’s body.