By Rasheed Sobowale

Contrary to contemporary assumption that the thicker a hair the higher the probability of it being stronger, a recent research result suggests otherwise.

Elephant hair is four times thicker than human hair but only half as strong as the human hair. For the purpose of being scientific enough, the hair of mammals varies in diameter across species from ∼60 μm in humans to over ∼400 μm in giraffes and elephants.

In spite of this, a study report by a group of researchers studying the hair strength of many different mammals discovered that the thin hairs tend to be stronger than the thick ones.

The first author, Wen Yang, a nanoengineering researcher at the University of California, San Diego said, “We were very surprised by the result,”

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“Intuitively, we would think thick hair is stronger. Natural materials have undergone thousands of years of evolution, so to us, these materials are very well developed. We hope to learn from nature and develop synthetic products with comparable properties.”

The human hair has been said to possess similar characteristics to that of steel when adjusted for density. This is provable by just examining hair’s resistance to deformation.

Studies revealed the ability of the hair to exude such characteristic is because of its hierarchical structure.

The human hair is composed of an outer layer called cuticle that wraps around an inner layer (the cortex). The cortex is made of many small fibres linked by chemical bonds.

Hairs strength is even more reinforced by smaller fibres embedded in the small fibres previously mentioned in the above paragraph.

That is the secret behind hair resilience in spite of it being made of proteins!

Yang and her team tested hairs from eight different mammals ― humans, bears, boars, horses, capybaras, javelinas, giraffes, and elephants. The human hair is as thin as 80m while that of an elephants could be thicker than over 350m in diameter.

The researcher tied the collected hair samples to a machine that gradually pulled them apart until they broke and discovered the thinner hairs showed more resilience than the thicker.

Another surprising observation was that babies’ hair also tend to be stronger than that of adults.

Vanguard News Nigeria.