Hair yesterday gone tomorrow.

Today on a bus ride back to Indianapolis (why do I keep coming back?) I finished up the excellent book, Mutants by: Armand Marie Leroi. In it many topics of extreme fascination, many of them I have looked into more, but one that struck me as quite a bit queer was the description of "lanugo hair."

From Wikipedia:

Lanugo are hairs that grow on the body to attempt to insulate it because of lack of fat. It is a type of pelage. It occurs on fetuses and it is normal for the unborn fetus to consume the hair, which then contributes to the newborn baby's first feces (meconium). Lanugo hair is usually shed and replaced by vellus hair at 36–40 weeks gestation. The presence of lanugo in newborns is a sign of premature birth.

It is also a common symptom of serious anorexia nervosa, as the body attempts to insulate itself as body fat is lost.

It just seems strange to think that for a period of our development, we're floating around completely covered in downy translucent hair that mostly goes away by the time we come out. Who knew. Now I do, and so do you. ...unless you just read that last sentence, then you don't know what I know.