Approximately how thick is a single strand of cat (domestic housecat) hair?

Question

I did a little research to lead me to finding the general range of width for human hair, which is anywhere from around 30µm to 180µm... approximately.

I'm trying to compare this to the width of cat hair, since I have been told (and it does seem a bit evident) that cat hair is much thinner than human hair in general.

I can't seem to find any information on this. Does anybody have any answers?

Note: I apologize if this isn't the right Stack Exchange forum for this question. I wasn't sure where to put it, so I did an SE site search for 'cat' and this one seemed to be the most appropriate.

Off hand I don't know, but I actually do know a few books that might have it in it (unfortunately I couldn't find open copies). But if you really want to find out the answer of say your cat, you could do this experiment and let us know. I will post an answer if I find one. — Atl LED, Jul 09 '13 at 18:37
Google cat hair diameter gives this as top hit (30 micrometers). — Alan Boyd, Jul 09 '13 at 18:51
Thank you. Hmmm... I didn't see that when I searched earlier... — vertigoelectric, Jul 09 '13 at 22:20

score 3 · Answer 1 · edited Jul 09 '13 at 19:57

3

There are a few different types of hair on a cat. But I think you are referring to the down hair on the cat. It will also vary on the breed of domestic cat. As a general statement, you can find a lot of quirky characteristics of mammals by looking at early genetics papers where people where trying to find genetic elements to obvious phenotypes.

For the down hairs, you can see "The ‘rex’ type of coat in the domestic cat." Journal of Genetics [0022-1333] Searle, A G and Jude, A C yr:1956 vol:54 iss:3 pg:506

Table 3. Thickness in µ of normal and rex down-hairs

[Type of Cat][Diameter in um][SE of Mean]

Normal          25.8;   1·32;

English rex     16·2;   0·54;

German rex      17·0;   0·50;

edited Jul 09 '13 at 19:57

blep

2,824
1
23
40

answered Jul 09 '13 at 18:57

Atl LED

4,109
2
21
44

Ooh that's pretty. Thanks for the edit, I now know how to make tables. – Atl LED Jul 09 '13 at 20:01
You're welcome. It's not really a proper table, but the code formatting does make it look nicer. – blep Jul 09 '13 at 21:57

Approximately how thick is a single strand of cat (domestic housecat) hair?

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