Animal hair is usually calledfur.Sheep andgoats have curly hair, calledwool. Wool is used to make many products, likeclothing and blankets.
Humans and some otheranimals have lost much of their hair throughevolution, and some other mammals, such as theelephant and thewhale, have almost none at all.
It can protect against losing body heat. This is thought to be the basic, original function of hair.[2][3]
It protects againstUVradiation, which damages the skin.
It can protect against rain or water. Air can be trapped in the fur, or oil can be secreted by the skin. Both these methods prevent the rain or water from making the body too cold. Aquatic mammals in cold waters usually have blubber (fat) under the skin, and almost no hair.
Defence: hair is modified in mammals likeporcupines, for protection.
Hair colouring can perform different functions. It helps tocamouflage some animals. It can also signal to others of the samespecies. Examples are: signalling to females for mating purposes and signalling to others for territory control. Signalling danger to other species (aposematic colouring) is also done by, for example,skunks.
Animals can change their hair so they look bigger, or more threatening. This can also be used for mating; which is the case withlions, for example. Also, the male lions' mane also protects their neck from damage when fighting other males.
Some animals, for example certaininsects andspiders also havehairs. However, these are not hair in the biological sense, but are actuallybristles. Thehairs found on certain plants are also not true hair, buttrichomes.
An adult male with hair on his head, face (beard and mustache), and body (chest and stomach). This typical of an adult male.
Inhumans, hair grows mostly on thehead, and the amount of body hair is different from person to person.
During puberty, both men and women experience hair growth, all over their body, especially armpit and pubic hair. However, men develop thicker and more abundant body hair, and develop beards and mustaches, with hairier arms and legs, and they generally grow hair on their chest, abdomen (belly) and back. Women in comparison, have much finer hair with a less abundant distribution.
Hair color is passed down by parents only. Natural hair color can be given only bygenes. Natural hair color is passed downgenetically by both mother and father. This relies ondominant andrecessivegenes carried by a parent. These genes may not be the color of their hair, however, many people carrygenes that arerecessive and do not show in their traits or features.
Dyeing hair is to change the color of hair. It consists of achemical mixture which can change the color of hair by achemical reaction. Many people dye their hair to hide gray or white hairs. This is because most people gain white or gray hairs as they grow older.
Two types ofmelaninpigment give hair its color:eumelanin andpheomelanin. Pheomelanin colors hair red. Eumelanin determines the darkness of the hair color. A low concentration of brown eumelanin results in blond hair, but more brown eumelanin will color the hair brown. High amounts of black eumelanin result in black hair, while low concentrations give gray hair. All humans have some pheomelanin in their hair.
The genetics of hair colors are not yet firmly established. According to one theory, at least two gene pairs control human hair color.
One phenotype (brown/blond) has adominant brownallele and arecessiveblond allele. A person with a brown allele will have brown hair; a person with no brown alleles will be blond. This explains why two brown-haired parents can produce a blond-haired child.
The other gene pair is a non-red/red pair, where the not-red allele is dominant and the allele for red hair is recessive. A person with two copies of the red-haired allele will have red hair, but it will be either auburn or bright reddish orange depending on whether the first gene pair gives brown or blond hair, respectively.
The two-gene model does not account for all possible shades of brown, blond, or red (for example, platinum blond versus dark blonde/light brown), nor does it explain why hair color sometimes darkens as a person ages. Several other gene pairs control the light versus dark hair color in a cumulative effect (quantitative genetics).
Hair texture is also inherited genetically. The thickness of hair, its color and its tendency to curl are all inherited. There are also genetic differences between men and women.
People have in between 90,000 to 130,000 hairs on their head. About 100-150 fall out each day (depending on thickness of hair), but they usually grow back. Some men are bald but girls and women may become bald if they lose their hair from a disease calledalopecia.
Men often lose some of their hair as they grow older. This is known asbaldness. Doctors call it "male pattern baldness" because hairs often fall out in similar places. It often begins by hair falling out first from the front of the head, and then from the top of the head. After a while, all that may be left is a some hair running above the ears and around the lower back of the head. Even though it is unusual for women to go bald, many women suffer from thinning hair over the top of their head as they grow old.
People have tried to find cures for hair loss for thousands of years. In an effort to get their hair back, men have tried "cures" like applying strange lotions or even having their heads packed inchickenmanure.[4] Many unproven "cures" are still marketed today. It is only in the last decade or so thattreatments have been developed which do sometimes work. Some doctors do hairtransplants, where they take tiny plugs of hair from areas like the back of the neck and plant them in the bald spots on the head. Somedrugs have been tested and approved for sale as hair loss treatments. They encourage hair regrowth and thickening, but work better if applied before hair loss turns to baldness.
People have been interested in hair on their heads for hundreds of thousands of years. For both men and women, styling and coloring hair have been ways to look good, and get attention. Sometimes society makes rules about hair, for example by not allowing people to cut their hair orbeards, like inSikhism,Judaism andIslam[5]
