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Brown Bear Hair

Brown Bear Hair

This is a sample collected from a section of brown bear hide.

Transmitted 20 Degrees Off Crossed Linear Polarized Light

Definition/Function:

This hair belongs to the group Ursus arctos. This group includes the Grizzly bear and the Kodiak bear in the United States.

Significance in the Environment:

Characteristic Features:

Brown bear hair is about 50 micrometers wide from the root to near the tip. It has an often fragmented medulla showing occasional stretches of uniserial ladder structure. The cuticle pattern is imbricate flattened and has a scale count of about 8 per 100 micrometers. Brown bear hair has a refractive index along its length of about 1.56 and perpendicular to its length of about 1.55. It has a birefringence of about 0.01 and a positive sign of elongation.

Associated Particles:

References:

References with Photographs and/or Drawings

Hausman, Leon Augustus, "Structural charactreistics of the hair of mammals", THE AMERICAN NATURALIST, vol. 54, no. 635, pp.496-523,

Hausman, Leon Augustus, "Recent studies of hair structure relationships", THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY, pp. 258-277,

Glaister, John, A STUDY OF HAIRS AND WOOLS, Misr Press, Cairo, 1931.

(Click here for FBI site for Animal Hair Identification.)

Keys Only

Mayer, William V., "The hair of California mammals with keys to the dorsal guard hairs of California mammals", THE AMERICAN MIDLAND NATURALIST, vol. 48, no. 2, pp. 480-512, 1952.

Stains, Howard J., "Field key to guard hair of middle western furbearers", JOURNAL OF WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT, vol. 22, no.1, pp. 95-97, January, 1958.

Mathiak, Harold A., "A key to hairs of the mammals of southern Michigan", JOURNAL OF WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 251-268, October, 1938.