Why Elephant's Hair was Stiff

Hair on the animal generally serves to keep their body warm. But elephants are stiff hair like fibers appeared to have the opposite function, namely to maintain the body temperature of large mammals to remain cool.

Hair is one of the important characteristics that distinguishes between mammals and other members of the animal kingdom, apart from the ability to produce milk. Hair helps the body retain heat, which is very important to warm-blooded animals. Mammals burn a lot of energy to keep their blood warm.

Contrary to other mammals, elephants just have to throw his body heat, not maintain it. Modern elephants often live in areas where temperatures can reach 50 degrees Celsius. Since the last ice age, elephants only live in warm areas. Uniqueness is also influenced by the amount of heat generation flesh owned elephants and at least the area to radiate heat.

Elephants can indeed cool off by flapping his ears like a fan, or wallowing in mud and dust and even water to reject heat. Thick-skinned animals such as elephants also have a trick known to dissipate heat, such as hot blood circulate to the ears to cool.

Hair on an Asian elephant (right) compared to an African elephant's head (left). (Picture from: http://scienceblogs.com/)

However, all this was not enough to remove the heat produced by elephants. The key turned out to lie in the rigid hair like fibers in the body of the elephant. In a report published in the journal PLoS ONE, October 10, 2012, investigators say hair is considered no function was apparently helps remove heat from the body of the elephant. "Now we can show you that hair is useless," said Bou-Zeid.

Based on the calculation of waste heat from the surface and the wind speed, thickness of hair that reaches half a millimeter and a length of 20 millimeters, scientists concluded stiff hair elephant improve the animal's ability to cope with the heat. "We found a hair cover can increase the animal's ability to cope with the heat and can increase heat loss between 5 and 20 percent, depending on the speed of the wind," said Bou-Zeid. *** [LIVESCIENCE | TJANDRA | KORAN TEMPO 4035]

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