• Question: If you never cut your hair till the day you died how long would your hair be?

    Asked by ntashabear to Angela, Gabriele, Karen, Maria, Shane on 11 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Gabriele De Chiara

      Gabriele De Chiara answered on 11 Nov 2013:

      Human hair grows at about 1.25 cm per month so it grows approximately 1.25*12 = 15 cm per year. So after 80 years without cutting your hair it will be 15 cm/year * 80 years = 1200 cm which is 12 meters!!!

    • Photo: Karen McCarthy

      Karen McCarthy answered on 11 Nov 2013:

      Just to add, the Guiness Book of Records says that the world’s longest hair belongs to Xie Qiuping (China) at 5.627 m (18 ft 5.54 in) when measured on 8 May 2004. She has been growing her hair since 1973 from the age of 13!

    • Photo: Angela Stevenson

      Angela Stevenson answered on 11 Nov 2013:

      Wow! I d say a 12 m long mane of hair would be very very heavy to drag around! I m learning a lot from you two, Gabriele and Karen. Interesting facts and great question Natasha 🙂

    • Photo: Shane Mc Guinness

      Shane Mc Guinness answered on 11 Nov 2013:

      Wow, great one! I think is pretty much covered, but maybe you could ask yourself would it actually get that long?! We’re primates who have evolved to live in some fairly hostile environments. So would our hair actually get that long?! It certainly wouldn’t evolve to get longer as back when we were living in much more wild places we would have been caughy by sabre-toothed tigers or wolves because the hair would get in the way! So the genes that gave us that long hair wouldn’t be passed to our kids. On the other hand, some species grow REALLY long hair and tails to show other animals of that species that they can survive even with this really long annoying thing. This is called the “handicap principle”. We show people that, despite our long hair we can still survive, so must be very good at surviving! Ever wondered why a peacocks tail is so ridiculously long!?

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