Beards and Manes Their Function
The larger male mammals often posses a mane: The tom cat frequently has a mane, male lions famously, the large American buffalo has a larger mane on the male than the female, and unremarked the human has a mane – the beard – on men. It seems odd that the history of women hatred, involving the wife of the reluctant blacksmith making the nails to crucify Christ, does not include this analogy of the man to that noble male lion; beard as mane seems novel.
The Heat Economy of the Larger Male:
The larger male having a smaller ratio of surface area to volume looses a smaller fraction of his heat through his surface than does the smaller female all else being equal. A man, for instance, can sweat at twelve times the rate of a woman and has protuberant superficial blood vessels to mitigate this cooling difficulty.
It looks perverse therefore to grow a mane for it seems to exacerbate the problem. Sporus argues this is more apparent than real.
Manes and Beards As Resolving a Working/Resting Dilemma:
It is during exertion or running that the dissipation of heat to the surroundings becomes most onerous. It is during these times that one is likeliest to overheat. The organism must be equipped with features which equip it for heat loss during activity.
But what if these very features over-egg the pudding or are variously unhappy when the thing is at rest? Fitted with features for cooling it becomes too cold when it is resting or, in general, producing little heat. It must be that beards and manes insulate from cold when little heat is being produced but do little to inhibit heat loss when large amounts of heat are being created.
Why Might This Be?
The only way to test this idea is to do some tricky calorimetry; there is little point in conjecture. However it is possible to speculate in various ways:
One argument might be that the brain, being a surprisingly energetic organ, dissipates about 20% of the bodies metabolic output during resting and this percentage presumably decreases when the muscles, for example, are active. During resting the brain's heat output could be used to help keep the rest of the body warm, as long as the face and neck regions are somewhat insulated with a mane so that the brain's warmth is not lost during its journey to the torso.
Err....that's it.
Priority: Sporus has no idea whether this idea is new. He does not accept the guild's right to asign priority – which should be a matter of calendar date. He will consider legal action if anybody else, subsequently claims priority for this idea .