Guard hairs

Fur is the hair covering of non-human mammals, particularly those mammals with extensive body hair that is soft and thick. The stiffer bristles on animals such as pigs are not generally referred to as fur.

The term pelage – first known use in English c. 1828 – (French, from Middle French, from poil hair, from Old French peilss, from Latin pilus,) is sometimes used to refer to the body hair of an animal as a complete coat. Fur is also used to refer to animal pelts which have been processed into leather with the hair still attached. The words fur or furry are also used, more casually, to refer to hair-like growths or formations, particularly when the subject being referred to exhibits a dense coat of fine, soft "hairs." If layered, rather than grown as a single coat, it may consist of short down hairs, long , and in some cases, medium awn hairs. Mammals with reduced amounts of fur are often called "naked", as with the naked mole-rat, or "hairless", as with hairless dogs.

An animal with commercially valuable fur is known within the fur industry as a furbearer. The use of fur as clothing or decoration is considered controversial by some people: most animal welfare advocates object to the trapping and killing of wildlife, and to the confinement and killing of animals on fur farms.

Fur usually consists of two main layers:

Mammals with well-developed down and guard hairs also usually have large numbers of awn hairs. These begin their growth much as guard hairs do, but change their mode of growth, usually when less than half the length of the hair has emerged. This portion of the hair is called awn. The rest of the growth is thin and wavy, much like down hair. In many species of mammals, the awn hairs comprise the bulk of the visible coat. The proximal part of the awn hair shares the function of the down hairs, whereas the distal part aids the water-shedding function of the guard hairs, though their thin basal portion prevents their being erected like true guard hairs.

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