Fur

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, see Fur (disambiguation).

A dog's fur usually consists of longer, stiffer, guard hairs—which can be straight, wiry, or wavy, and of various lengths, hiding a soft, short-haired undercoat.

Detailed photo of the fur on the head of a five month old kitten.

The term fur refers to the body hair of non-human mammals also known as the pelage (like the term plumage in birds). Fur comes from the coats of animals; the animal's coat may consist of short ground hair, long guard hair, and, in some cases, medium awn hair. Not all mammals have fur; animals without fur may be referred to as "naked", as in The Naked Ape and naked mole rat.

An animal with commercially valuable fur is a furbearer (see fur clothing).

Fur usually consists of two main layers:

Ground hair or underfur — the bottom layer consisting of wool hairs which tend to be shorter, flattened, curly and denser than the top layer.
Guard hair — the top layer consisting of longer straight shafts of hair that stick out through the underfur. This is usually the visible layer for most mammals and contains most of the pigmentation.

[edit] Fish-fur

'Fish-fur' is a slang term used in the Russian Army for the fake fur often used on winter clothing and the ubiquitous Ushanka hats. So-named because it does not come from any recognisable animal, artificial fur is often a by-product of the petrochemical process.