Paper short abstract:

Biological variations are the prime properties of evolution which shape the body are generally considered as signatures for understanding the evolution. Like other organs and parts of a body hair has a range of variations and the details of hair strands offer certain definite and variable features.

Paper long abstract:

Hair is a taxonomic characteristic of mammals and displays various taxon specific differences. Tricho-taxonomic studies of different mammalian species have been carried out, but scanty information is available on Primates. Recent studies of comparative genomics, population genetics, gene-expression analyses in terms of research work on morphological and quantitative variables, started to make inroads into the complex genetic architecture of human developmental biology. In order to understand the evolutionary features and variation within and between hair of three male adult non-human (apes) primate species (150 hair strands) and human male (50 hair strands), a study of histomorphological and quantitative variables was undertaken. The results on histomorphological study on incidences medullation demonstrated significant (p<0.05) clustering of all kinds of medullation in apes and human. However, histomorphological cuticular scale revealed unique feature of crenate type in human in comparison to non-human primates having flattened types. Examination on quantitative variables vindicated shaft diameter of human were significantly higher (p<0.05) than the shaft diameter of non-human primates. On the other hand, medullary diameter demonstrated significantly (p<0.05) smaller in human in comparison to that of the non-human primates. Result of the correlation analysis, however, revealed significant (p<0.05) positive correlation between human and chimpanzee in terms quantitative variables of shaft and medullary characters. The cardinal feature of the present study revealed the significance of hair histomorphological and quantitative variables for the study of variation and evolution.