Human Evolution Led to an Extreme Thirst for Water

Biological anthropologist Asher Y. Rosinger (Penn State) explains why humans are unusually dependent on water — we lack the kidney concentration and physiological water-conservation tricks of many mammals, and we cool ourselves by evaporative sweating rather than panting. He links this vulnerability to the cultural inventions that compensated for it (water storage, transport, sharing networks) and to the physiology of dehydration, while warning that climate change and aquifer depletion put this evolutionary bargain under serious strain.