If you have highlight hair, or even if you're envious of someone who has straight hair, you might be curious about what causes some strands to swirl while others remain smooth. According to a 2018 study published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, there are two possible explanations for this phenomenon.
A greater number of hair cells on the convex side of the hair follicle — i. e., the outside edge of the curl — and fewer on the concave side, which is the inside edge — can be explained by the first hypothesis. Because of the smaller number of cells on the inside, the edge of the follicle is shorter, which causes the follicle to be pulled inwards, resulting in the curl.
The other theory proposes that differences in cell lengths on the convex and concave sides of a strand of hair could be responsible for the formation of curls. The curl is created, in a manner similar to the first theory, by the relative size difference between elongated cells on the outside and compact cells on the inside of the cell. honey blonde highlights, rather than straight hair, is thought to be more effective at keeping mammals warm than straight hair alone. In fact, straight hairs intertwined with curls serve as the final line of defense in the fight against thermal loss.
"The typical mammalian coat structure is that of a forest with shrubs," said Duane Harland, study lead researcher and senior scientist at AgResearch, one of New Zealand's largest corporate government research institutes. "It is like a forest with shrubs," he added. In order to "create a space near the skin," straight hairs stand up, while finer curly hairs fill in the gaps and trap air, according to Harland, speaking to Live Science. Harland's research, on the other hand, was limited to Merino sheep curls. It's difficult to say for certain whether insulation was a factor in the development of ombre hair color in some humans."The short answer is that no one knows anything about human hair," Harland explained. Our social aspect, as well as our ability to develop technology that replaces functions that were previously covered by biology, such as hats, make it difficult to pin down exactly what we are.
While this is the case, we can still learn a great deal about the origins and biology of our own follicular features from our more furry friends, because if you go back far enough in time, our hair evolved from the same genetic origins as our furry friends."Mammalian hair has been around for a long time," Harland said. According to Harland, it most likely developed before the dinosaurs.(According to a 2016 study published in the journal Scientific Reports, an analysis of 29 fossil skulls of archaic mammal relatives, the therapsids, suggests that these mammalian predecessors had fur.)
Using sophisticated microscopy techniques to zoom in on sheep wool fibers and measure the differences between the number and size of cells on the inside of a curve and those on the outside, Harland and his colleagues put the two hypotheses to the test. Almost immediately, the team discovered evidence that refuted the notion that the number of cells is the cause of the curl.
We discovered evidence that the theory that curvature is caused by the presence of more cells on the side of the fiber closest to the outside is incorrect, according to Dr. Chen. The reason for this is that, in all cases, he discovered that the cells on the outside of the curve were longer, which supports the theory that curvature is supported by variations in cell type length, according to Harland.
Unfortunately, things aren't quite that straightforward. As is so often the case in science, the story does not come to a close here. We haven't gotten to the bottom of the problem of curly hair yet, according to Harland. Under a microscope, he examined only individual cross sections of sheep hair fibers in his investigation. According to him, that snapshot of hair could be the result of curvature, but it could also be the result of twisting forces, which would cause the results to be muddled.
However, even if those cross sections were accurate representations of hair strands as a whole, that does not rule out the other theory, which suggests that cell numbers are to blame. Alternatively, it's possible that different animals' hair is curly for a variety of different reasons.
It would be a sign of arrogance to claim that the situation is universal, as Harland pointed out.
As a result, he believes there is room for further exploration. Wouldn't it be wonderful if other scientists were hard at work replicating and expanding upon our findings? Possibly, they will discover that we were wrong about something, hopefully only a few minor details, but that's the nature of science.