Why we like our homes to be as warm as Africa

IF YOU live with someone who keeps turning up the thermostat, you can blame their ancestors.

For all they are doing is unconsciously trying to match the temperature in eastern Africa where humans first evolved, researchers say.

A study found that the average indoor temperature in Western homes is within fractions of a degree of outdoor temperatures in Kenya.

North Carolina State University researchers measured the temperature in 37 households for more than a year. They found on that average across the seasons it was 77.6F (25.35C), marginally warmer than the average outdoor temperature of 77.1F ( 25.06C) in western Kenya.

Study leader Dr Michael Just said: ‘We attempt to recreate the conditions from which we evolved, before we had the ability to make homes – the ones to which our physiologies are adapted.’

The study was published in the journal Royal Society Open Science.