Astonishing research shows armpit hair could stop you contracting deadly disease

Hair does a lot more for us than most people give it credit for, depending on where it is on the body.

While the hair on our heads insulates against the cold and UV rays, body hair helps regulate temperature and traps heat when we need it.

Arm hair tends to get less appreciation, but it's actually stopping you from getting a nasty disease.

According to Interesting Things, which shared the news on Reddit and X, 'having lots of body hair makes it harder for biting insects such as mosquitoes to get a good chomp of you.'

The post added: 'It also increases the chance of you noticing the bugs before they do any damage.'

In other words, your body hair could be standing between you and malaria.

The attached clip shows a mosquito struggling to navigate through a tangle of body hair as it frustratingly attempts to reach the skin beneath. The claims are backed by a 2011 study, published in the Royal Society Biology Letters, which explored the role of human body hair compared to that of other apes.

The research identified two key types of fine hair involved vellus hair, the soft, barely-there 'peach fuzz' that covers most of the body, and terminal hair, which includes head hair as well as the coarser hair that grows in the armpits and pubic region.

"All these hairs have nerves attached to them and provide us with the ability to detect displacement of the hair," explained co-author Professor Michael Siva-Jothy. "By simultaneously forming a barrier and providing detection, these hairs prolong search time and make detection more likely because the bug has to spend more time clambering over them."

To test the theory, researchers placed hungry bed bugs on both shaved and unshaved areas of the arms of 29 student volunteers: 10 women and 19 men.

Scientists measured each participant's hairiness and timed how long it took each bed bug to reach a feeding position. Volunteers were warned they might be bitten, though in the end nobody was.

"Just before it begins to feed, the bed bug swings its proboscis from a 'stowed' position to a 'ready for action' position," added Siva-Jothy. "We stopped the trial as soon as that second position was adopted."

So next time you're debating whether to shave, remember that your body hair has spent millions of years evolving to keep things from biting you.