The chillest ape: How humans evolved a super-high cooling capacity

(University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine) Researchers at Penn Medicine have discovered how a uniquely high density of sweat glands evolved in the human genome. In a study published today in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, researchers showed that the higher density of sweat glands in humans is due mostly to accumulated changes in a regulatory region of DNA--called an enhancer region--that drives the expression of a sweat gland-building gene, explaining why humans are the sweatiest of the Great Apes.
Source: EurekAlert! - Biology - Category: Biology Source Type: news