介绍： This is Scientific American's 60-second Science, I'm Susanne Bard.
All mammals have hair—commonly called fur when it's on your cat or a koala. And the thickness of individual hairs varies from species to species. For example, elephant hairs are more than four times thicker than a strand from an adult human.
...

介绍： This is Scientific American's 60-second Science, I'm Susanne Bard.
All mammals have hair—commonly called fur when it's on your cat or a koala. And the thickness of individual hairs varies from species to species. For example, elephant hairs are more than four times thicker than a strand from an adult human.
"Normally, when the animal is larger, the hair tends to be thicker."
University of California, San Diego, materials scientist Wen Yang. She's interested in how biological structures like hair hold up under stress. That interest comes from a desire to design better synthetic materials.
Yang's team tested the tensile strength of hair from eight different mammal species, including humans. They subjected those hairs to increasing levels of tension until the fibers broke. The researchers assumed that thick hair—from giraffes, elephants and boars, for example, would be more robust. But they were wrong.

这里是科学美国人——60秒科学系列，我是苏珊娜·巴德。
所有哺乳动物都有毛发，猫咪或考拉身上的通常被称为“毛”。个体毛发的粗细程度因物种而不同。例如，大象毛发比成年人头发粗四倍。
“通常，动物体型越大，其毛发往往越粗。”
加州大学圣地亚哥分校的材料科学家杨文（音译）说到。她感兴趣的是毛发这种生物结构如何在压力下保持完好。这种兴趣来自于设计出更优合成材料的渴望。
杨的团队测试了包括人类在内的八种哺乳动物毛发的抗张强度。他们让这些毛发承受越来越强的张力，直到纤维断裂。研究人员原本以为长颈鹿、大象和野猪身上的粗密毛发会更加结实。但他们想错了。