hair length as a character

[John Grehan]

I wonder if any of the systematics experts on the list could add
anything to the question of hair length as a character with respect to
Ken's observation that:

>       On the other hand you combine hair length into a single
character.
> If you split it into a body hair character and a head hair character,
they
> wouldn't favor an orangutan-hominid clade at all.  

I did some further thinking about this (it's good to think now and
then!) and what I settled on was that if I were interested in hair
length as a character in of itself rather than where it occurred, then I
could treat it that way. If one were more interested in location of hair
as a character then one could do that. Is it just a matter of different
choices of what is the character (hair as a character with long/short as
character states, versus head or body as a character and hair length as
a character state) or could I be missing something? 

I still think the hair length as a character is valid since it is a fact
that humans and orangutans have the longest hair of any primate. Perhaps
a comparable situation is genital swelling. Orangutans and humans are
unique among apes in lacking genital swelling during the menstrual
cycle, while orangutans are unique (I think) in having swelling during
pregnancy. If one were just to focus on the presence or absence of
genital swelling irrespective of occurrence then humans and orangutans
would not fall together as humans do not exhibit that feature in either
condition and orangutans would be lumped together with chimps and
gorillas which have genital swelling only during the menstrual cycle.

John Grehan