• Question: what is our hair and finger nails made out of?

    Asked by jenguy to Adam, Catherine, Karen, Leila, Nazim on 13 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Karen Masters

      Karen Masters answered on 13 Mar 2012:

      From my memory of GCSE biology its cartilage. But I haven’t studied any biology since then. Your school biology teachers would be better people to ask that.

    • Photo: Adam Stevens

      Adam Stevens answered on 13 Mar 2012:

      Hair and nails are actually made of pretty much the same thing – a protein called keratin. If you stay in water for too long and try to cut your nails (not saying I’ve ever done that……:P) they can split apart showing that they’re kind of made up of lots of fine hair like strands.

      Things like elephant tusks and rhino horns are made of the same stuff, I’ve felt some in museums and you can tell they’re basically hair!

    • Photo: Leila Battison

      Leila Battison answered on 19 Mar 2012:

      Long stringy proteins called keratin!

      If you want to really irritate your hairdresser – when they say you have to have you’re ends off because they’re dead, you can tell them smugly that all of your hair is dead, or else you’d need an anasthetic before you had a haircut! really, hair was never alive – it was just made by cells that are alive.

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