50 Fun Facts About Hair

Hair is made mostly of which protein?

The same protein forms fingernails, feathers, hooves and horns.

Hair is a distinguishing feature of which class of animals?

Even whales and dolphins have a few hairs at some stage of life.

Which part of a hair is actually alive?

The visible shaft has no biochemical activity, which is why a haircut does not hurt.

What determines whether a person's hair is straight or curly?

Round shafts give straight hair; the flatter and more oval the shaft, the curlier the hair.

Which pigment dominates in red hair?

Brown and black hair are dominated by eumelanin; blond hair simply has very little pigment of either kind.

Why does hair turn grey?

White patches present from birth or early childhood are a separate condition called poliosis.

The three phases of the hair growth cycle are anagen, catagen and what?

Anagen is the growth phase, catagen the transition and telogen the resting phase before the hair sheds.

Roughly how fast is scalp hair commonly said to grow?

Reality varies from 0.6 to over 3 cm a month, and thicker hairs grow faster than thin ones.

Which natural hair colour goes with the highest number of hairs on the head, about 150,000?

Redheads have the fewest, around 90,000, but each strand tends to be thicker.

Does hair keep growing after death?

The apparent growth of hair and nails on a body is an illusion caused by water loss.

What tiny muscle makes hair stand on end and gives humans goose bumps?

In furrier mammals the same reflex fluffs the coat for warmth or to look bigger.

Smita Srivastava, who set the 2023 record for longest hair at 7 ft 9 in, is from which country?

She had been growing it for 32 years; the earlier record-holder Xie Qiuping of China had hair over 5.6 metres long.

The three layers of a hair strand, from the outside in, are the cuticle, the cortex and the what?

The cuticle's flat cells overlap like roof shingles; the cortex holds the protein bundles and the pigment.

Which country has the world's highest share of redheads, at around 13% by one estimate?

Around 40% of people in south-east Scotland carry a red-hair gene variant, even if their own hair is not red.

Red hair is caused mainly by variants of which gene, found on chromosome 16?

Around 80% of redheads carry a variant of the gene, which also makes their skin hard to tan.

Which is the rarest natural human hair colour?

It occurs in only 2 to 6% of people of north-western European ancestry.

In medieval and Renaissance European art, which biblical figure was traditionally painted with red hair?

The ancient poet Xenophanes had described the Thracians as blue-eyed and red-haired.

Roughly what share of adults in Europe and North America are naturally blond?

Blond hair usually darkens with age, so it is far more common in children than in adults.

Outside Europe, natural blond hair is common among the native people of which region?

The mutation appears in about a quarter of Solomon Islanders and is found nowhere outside Oceania.

In ancient Greece and Rome, blonde hair was strongly associated with which profession?

They dyed it with saffron dyes or coloured powders to attract customers.

By age 50, pattern hair loss affects roughly what share of men?

About a quarter of women are affected by the same age; minoxidil and finasteride are the standard drug treatments.

Why did the ancient Egyptians invent the wig?

Wealthy Egyptians topped their wigs with scented cones of animal fat that melted through the day.

Which French king pioneered wig-wearing in 1624 after going bald early?

Wigs also had a hygiene benefit: a shaved head and a delousable hairpiece beat a lice-ridden natural head.

The word 'wig' is a shortening of what?

Periwig itself came from the French 'perruque'; Samuel Pepys fretted about buying one during the plague year of 1665.

The red-and-white stripes of a barber's pole recall which medieval sideline of the barber's trade?

Red stood for the blood, white for the bandages; the basin on top represented the vessel that held the leeches.

Which biblical strongman lost his power when his hair was cut?

His uncut hair was part of a Nazirite vow; Delilah arranged the haircut for the Philistines.

Complete the fairy-tale line: 'Rapunzel, Rapunzel, ...'

The Grimms published it in 1812, adapting a French tale, Persinette, that itself came from an Italian one.

In Sikhism, the practice of never cutting one's hair is called what?

It is one of the Five Ks ordered by Guru Gobind Singh in 1699; the hair is combed twice daily and tied under a turban.

Chicago stylist Margaret Vinci Heldt modelled the 1960 beehive hairstyle on what?

A reporter named it after Heldt added a bee-shaped hat pin; the B-52's later took their band name from the style.

The beehive is also nicknamed the 'B-52' because it resembles what?

Band members Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson wore beehives, and the band took its name from the hairstyle.

Which hip-hop group does the OED credit with coining 'mullet' for the haircut?

Their 1994 song 'Mullet Head' spelled it out: 'number one on the side and don't touch the back'.

The bob haircut became a symbol of which 1920s young-woman archetype?

Dancer Irene Castle is said to have introduced her 'Castle bob' to America in 1915; Louise Brooks made it iconic.

Which British hairdresser revived the bob in the mid-1960s with sharp geometric cuts?

His five-point cut turned the flapper style into a modernist statement.

What is the wide-toothed comb used to shape a rounded 1970s hairstyle colloquially called?

The style peaked in the late 1960s and early 1970s with figures such as Angela Davis, Jimi Hendrix and the Jackson 5.

The historical hairstyle of the actual Mohawk people differed from the punk 'mohawk' how?

The modern strip-down-the-middle look is closer to styles worn by the Pawnee.

What is the strip of hair 16th-century Ukrainian Cossacks left after shaving their heads?

Also called a chupryna, it was often braided or tied in a topknot.

The 1968 rock musical 'Hair' is set among a 'tribe' of long-haired hippies protesting against what?

It defined the 'rock musical', used a racially integrated cast and ended with the audience invited on stage for a 'Be-In'.

Why do shaved hairs seem to grow back thicker?

The hair itself never actually thickens; waxed hair, pulled from the root, often grows back finer.

Western monks' shaved crown, a ring of hair around a bald patch, is called what?

Head-shaving has also been used as punishment and, in the military, as a uniform haircut.

The Chinese 'queue' hairstyle shaved the front of the head and did what with the rest?

The front and top were shaved every ten days in a style that mimicked pattern baldness.

Where is a hair transplant's balding-resistant 'donor site' usually located?

The same technique can restore eyelashes, eyebrows and beards or fill in scars.

What is a 'merkin'?

The Oxford Companion to the Body dates it to the 1450s, when people shaved against lice and then covered up.

The most widely used hair-typing system was created by the hairstylist of which celebrity?

Andre Walker's system runs from Type 1 straight hair to Type 4 kinky, tightly coiled hair.

What is the fine, short body hair that most people have, as opposed to thick terminal hair, called?

Vellus hair is a juvenile trait that stays visible in women, while men grow coarser terminal hair after puberty.

Roughly how many hairs does the average person with black hair have on their head?

Blondes average about 150,000, brunettes 110,000 and redheads 90,000.

Which gene locus explains the thick, straight hair predominant among people of East Asian descent?

The mutation is thought to have arisen within the past 65,000 years or so.

Hair originated in the synapsids, the common ancestor of mammals, roughly how long ago?

Fossils rarely preserve soft tissue, though Permian coprolites hint that non-mammalian synapsids had fur.

According to Jablonski, why was Afro-textured hair an evolutionary advantage in equatorial Africa?

She argues the word woolly is a misnomer, since sparse springy coils create a sponge-like, breathable structure.

Per one study, how does thick hair's monthly growth compare with thin hair's?

The same research found no significant difference between men and women, but faster growth in Chinese subjects than French or African ones.

Eyelashes rarely grow beyond what length?

They act like a cat's whiskers, sensing when dust or dirt is too close to the eye.