While your body hair can help keep you warm, that’s not its sole purpose for modern humans. In fact, most of us likely aren’t gaining any meaningful amount of warmth from our body hair—at least over most of our bodies. Instead, our body hair helps to enhance our sense of touch. It can help us detect weak air currents, or light touches.
As researchers from the Auckland Bioengineering Institute at the University of Auckland in New Zealand have demonstrated, we can augment our body hair to gain additional senses.