Thursday, July 23, 2009

More Grey Hairs


I seem to be acquiring more grey hairs with every passing day at the moment, so I thought I might as well take a look at them under the microscope. Magnfied x400, it's clear that the grey ones aren't so much grey as colourless (foreground) - increasing numbers of my hair follicles have given up making melanin pigment.

2 comments:

  1. Could be a survival mechanism akin to Kettlewell's observations on the moth Biston betularia, which suggested that the melanic variety avoided predation in polluted industrial areas. Grey hair is a sign of just how clean the North-east is these days, I suspect. Have you noticed others going grey around you? Are people who don't go grey mysteriously disappearing? Subject for another PhD thesis, surely.

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  2. Now you come to mention it, Rob, there don't seem to be so many non-grey people around as there used to be. Maybe it's all those red kites that they've introduced up here, picking them off...

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