Another explanation of Man’s nakedness was suggested by Thomas Belt, based on the parallel case of certain races of naked dogs, namely, that he is the better able to free himself from parasites.[16] Darwin mentions this hypothesis and, in a footnote, cites in its favour “a practice with the Australians, when the vermin get troublesome, to singe themselves”; but he says, in the text, “whether this evil is of sufficient magnitude to have led to the denudation of the body through natural selection, may be doubted, since none of the many quadrupeds inhabiting the tropics have, as far as I know, acquired any specialised means of relief.”[17] It appears, too, that against the probability of such a result must be set the actual disadvantage of nakedness, as insisted upon by Wallace, who says that savages feel the want of protection and try to cover their backs and shoulders.[18] Still, the disadvantage implied in occasionally feeling the want of protection would not prevent the loss of hair, if this would deliver the race from serious dangers from vermin; and the force of the argument from the condition of other tropical quadrupeds depends, at least in some measure, upon whether or not there is something peculiar in the case of naked dogs and men. Belt argues that the naked dogs with dark, shining skins, found in Central America and also in Peru,[19] and which were found there at the Spanish conquest, have probably acquired their peculiar condition by natural selection, because they are despised by the natives, and no care is taken of their breeding, and yet they do not interbreed with the common hairy varieties, as usually happens with artificial stocks. The advantage of a naked skin being the greater freedom it gives from ticks, lice and other vermin, the advantage is especially great for a domestic animal living in the huts of savages, where, because they are inhabited year after year, vermin are extraordinarily abundant. The naked dog, then, differs from tropical quadrupeds which are adapted from a dateless antiquity to such vermin as infest them, by having been thrown by human companionship amongst not only strange vermin, but vermin in extraordinarily dense aggregation. Belt would have guarded a weak point in his case, had he explained why naked races of dogs are so scarce. Hairy races may have been more recently domesticated, or bred for their hairiness, or less addicted to an indoor life.