Human hair has little protective value, even in hirsute (excessively hairy) persons. Eyelashes, eyebrows, and the hairs inside the external ears and nostrils have obviously useful functions, and scalp hair may be thick enough to provide some protection from the midday Sun. The beard and mustache, though, are embellishments, which establish maleness and are likely to be concerned with sexual or social communication; and axillary and pubic hair probably form part of scent-disseminating mechanisms.

An important role for hair, however, is its participation in the body’s sensory apparatus. All hair follicles are surrounded by sensory nerves, and pressure on the hair shaft is transmitted to these nerves. Other mammals, including subhuman primates, have highly specialized sensitive hair follicles around the eyes, lips, and muzzle. These produce “tactile” hairs, known as vibrissae or whiskers, which are particularly large in nocturnal mammals. The follicles from which these hairs emerge are rich in nerves and are surrounded by a sinus filled with blood. Humans are the only animals with no sinus hair follicles; but human hair follicles, particularly those of the face, are well supplied with nerves, and human skin is probably more sensitive than that of any other mammal.

Hairs are manufactured by follicles. Essentially, these are tubelike pockets of the epidermis that extend through most or all of the depth of the skin and enclose a small papilla of dermis in their base. They lie at an angle to the skin surface. Two-thirds of the way up is a bulge, and attached to it are wisps of smooth muscle fibre that, on contracting, pull the follicle to a more or less perpendicular position. This action also puckers the skin into a mound on the surface—a so-called goose pimple.

Exactly as in other mammals, the human hair is formed by division of cells in the region known as the bulb, at the base of the follicle. Pigment is incorporated from melanocytes in this region. Human hair follicles also go through cycles of activity. After a period of growth, the hair becomes clubbed, rather than cylindrical, in shape. Fibrous rootlets anchor the club to the surrounding follicular tissue. While forming the club, the follicle shrivels up, the lower part becoming largely dissipated. A resting follicle can be recognized at once by the clubbed hair and by the follicle’s short size and unique structure. Follicles remain dormant for variable periods of time. When they become active again, they reconstruct a bulb that manufactures a new hair. As the new hair works its way to the surface, the club hair is loosened from its moorings and shed.

The activity of the hair follicles in the scalp is not synchronized, so that there is a small but steady molt of about 50 to 100 hairs a day from a total of around 150,000 follicles. There is, nevertheless, evidence of seasonal fluctuation, with the greatest hair loss in late summer and fall. A follicle may continue its activity for a long time, and hairs sometimes grow for several years and attain considerable lengths. Even in the human scalp—where the hair follicles are dense and vigorously productive—baldness occurs in a large number of individuals. Baldness is not a disease but is a systematic involution of hair follicles, culminating in organs similar to the primitive embryonic follicles; the numbers of follicles do not necessarily diminish.

More From Britannica

radiation: Skin

Until late in fetal life there is no line of demarcation between the forehead and scalp. After the fifth month of gestation the follicles in the rest of the scalp grow larger, but those of the forehead do not. After birth the hairs on the forehead become even smaller and nearly invisible. The hairline of newborn infants is usually indistinct; the familial hairline pattern is defined late in childhood through a process that is identical with that of baldness. When male-pattern baldness sets in, in the late 20s or earlier, the follicles affected undergo exactly the same changes as do those that establish the hairline.

Male-pattern baldness and its female equivalent, which is usually more diffuse, are hereditary conditions. In males this type of baldness is believed to arise from defects in the hair stem cells, which are located in the hair bulb and eventually mature into progenitor hair cells that then develop into mature hairs. Paradoxically, since male hormones (androgens) stimulate the growth of most other hair, this type of baldness occurs only if androgens are present.

Hairs vary in colour, diameter, and contour. The different colours result from variations in the amount, distribution, and type of melanin pigment in them, as well as from variations in surface structure that cause light to be reflected in different ways. Hairs may be coarse or so thin and colourless as to be nearly invisible. Straight hairs are round, while wavy hairs are alternately oval and round; very curly and kinky hairs are shaped like twisted ribbons.

Human hair grows at the rate of about one-third of a millimetre a day, and once keratinized it is inert. If the colour or shape of a hair is altered as it is formed, several days must elapse before the effect becomes visible. Hairs become white with aging because of the failure of the melanocytes to inject pigment into the cells as they are formed. Tales of hair becoming white overnight may perhaps arise from cases of rapid differential shedding of pigmented hairs from a mixed population of white and dark ones, but the suggestion that individual dark hairs can somehow rapidly turn white is not true.

The beard and mustache are the most obvious examples of hair that requires male sex hormones, or androgens, for its growth. Facial hairs begin to develop at puberty, about two years after the start of pubic hair growth. The rate of growth of the beard initially increases with age but levels out after 35. Hair on the chest—a traditional sign of masculinity—and that on the limbs are also androgen-dependent. Androgens cause longer hairs to be formed, partly by making them grow faster, but mainly by increasing the length of anagen, the growing phase. Fully formed hairs on the thigh are over three times longer in young men than in women; and the duration of anagen is around 54 days in males, compared with 22 days in females.

Pubic and axillary hair are also dependent on androgens, but they differ from other body hair in that they are luxuriant in females as well as in males. Their growth requires lower levels of hormone. The lower triangle of pubic hair is present in persons with a rare disease known as male pseudohermaphroditism. These individuals are genetic males who remain female in form until puberty because they lack an enzyme necessary to bind two atoms of hydrogen to the male hormone testosterone, which is responsible for male sex characteristics. Since persons with male pseudohermaphroditism lack facial hair, even when adults, it seems that beard growth requires the conversion of testosterone to dihydrotestosterone but that pubic hair growth does not.

Sebaceous glands

The sebaceous glands are usually attached to hair follicles and pour their secretion, sebum, into the follicular canal. In a few areas of the body, disproportionately large sebaceous glands are associated with very small hair follicles; in other areas there are glands that are altogether free of follicles.

The outstanding feature of sebaceous glands is their holocrine mode of secretion, involving complete disintegration of the sebaceous cells. The glands consist of a series of lobes, or acini, each with a duct running toward the main sebaceous duct. The cells are generated by cell division around the periphery of each lobe. As they move toward the centre of the lobe and toward the duct, they synthesize and accumulate fat globules and become progressively larger and distorted. Ultimately they disintegrate to form the secretion.

Human sebum is a complex mixture of lipids—triglyceride fats (57.5 percent), wax esters (26 percent), squalene (12 percent), cholesterol esters (3 percent), and cholesterol (1.5 percent). The triglycerides are largely hydrolyzed by bacteria by the time the sebum reaches the skin surface, so that about a third of the surface fat consists of free fatty acids.

The activity of the sebaceous glands is mainly controlled by androgens. The glands are quite large at birth because of the influence of maternal hormones during development, but they regress soon afterward. They become active again at, or somewhat in advance of, the first signs of puberty. Their rate of secretion is a little higher in adult men than in women, and it falls off gradually with age in both sexes. It is very low in eunuchs (castrated males) but has been shown to increase when they are treated with androgens. That other factors—for example, pituitary hormones—may also influence secretion is suggested by the observation that sebum production is abnormally high in acromegaly, a disorder resulting from excessive secretion of growth hormone.

The function of sebum has been greatly debated. Some scientists have theorized that it is important as an emollient to prevent too rapid loss of water from the superficial layers of the stratum corneum; others have held that it is a functionless product of now useless, or vestigial, organs. Yet humans have more and larger glands than most mammals, and there is a specific plan in their distribution: they are largest and most numerous on the face and around the anogenital surfaces.

The skin around the nose, mouth, and forehead and over the cheekbones has beds of gigantic glands, the secretion of which keeps these surfaces constantly oily. The sebaceous glands evenly spaced in rows at the border of the eyelids—the meibomian glands—are so large that they are easily seen with the naked eye when the eyelids are everted. The glands on the genitalia produce copious amounts of sebaceous matter called smegma. Only humans have rich populations of sebaceous glands on the hairless surfaces of the lips; these glands increase in number and size as persons mature. The inside of the cheeks also has many large sebaceous glands, and occasionally there are glands even on the gums and tongue.

It seems highly unlikely, then, that sebum is functionless. While its significance is certainly not established, it is possible that it is concerned with subtle chemical communication by smell or taste. Such a function would bring human beings into line with other mammals.