Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

Researchers at Yachtolt have been delving into the secrets of probiotics for 90 years. Yacold also

partners with nature portfolio to advance gut microbiome science through the global grants for

gut health, an investigator-led research program. To learn more about Yachtold, visit yawcult.co.j.p.

That's y-A-K-U-L-T.C-O-J-P.

When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on Yacolt.

This is Scientific American's 60-second science.

I'm Suzanne Bard.

All mammals have hair, commonly called fur when it's on your cat or koala. And the thickness of individual hairs varies from species to species. For example, elephant hairs are more than four times thicker than a strand from an adult human.

Normally, when the animal is larger, the hair tends to be thicker.

University of California's San Diego material scientist Wen Yang.

She's interested in how biological structures like hair hold up under stress.

That interest comes from a desire to design

better synthetic materials. Yang's team tested the tensile strength of hair from eight different

mammal species, including humans. They subjected those hairs to increasing levels of tension

until the fibers broke. The researchers assume that thick hair, from giraffes, elephants, and boars, for example, would

be more robust, but they were wrong.

Interestingly, we find the thinner hair actually is stronger.

In fact, adult human hair was some of the strongest in the study, and children's hair,

the thinnest of all, was even more durable.

Yang's team took a closer look at the hair with a scanning electron microscope.

All hair is made of the protein keratin.

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