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Hair helps keep you warm, right? But hair can also keep you cooler than bare skin, as long as the hair is not too thick. So says a study in the journal PLoS ONE.

Researchers studied elephants, which have very thin coats of hair. It's easy for the beasts to overheat: they may face temperatures of up to 120 degrees Fahrenheit¹, and they don't have much skin surface area to radiate the heat relative to their big body volume.

That's where the hair comes in. The researchers wrote equations modeling the elephants' hairy skin. As they expected, thick hair traps air and keeps the body warm. But below a certain density², hair stops insulating and wicks heat off the body instead—helping the elephants get rid of an extra 20 percent of their body heat, especially on windless days.

Heat sinks inside computers work in a similar way, with pins sticking up to help dissipate the interior heat.

The researchers speculate that hair may have actually evolved to help animals stay cool, because it first sprouted³ in mammals over a hundred million years ago in a hot climate. Hair-raising times, indeed.

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收听单词发音

1 Fahrenheit
n./adj.华氏温度；华氏温度计(的)
参考例句：
He was asked for the boiling point of water in Fahrenheit.他被问到水的沸点是华氏多少度。 The thermometer reads 80 degrees Fahrenheit.寒暑表指出华氏80度。

2 density
n.密集，密度，浓度
参考例句：
The population density of that country is 685 per square mile.那个国家的人口密度为每平方英里685人。 The region has a very high population density.该地区的人口密度很高。

3 sprouted
v.发芽( sprout的过去式和过去分词 )；抽芽；出现；（使）涌现出
参考例句：
We can't use these potatoes; they've all sprouted. 这些土豆儿不能吃了，都出芽了。来自《简明英汉词典》 The rice seeds have sprouted. 稻种已经出芽了。来自《现代汉英综合大词典》