Carson Bennett, Age 9, Of Penfrew, Ont., Canada, for his question:
What makes an animal's fur warm?
Our cavemen ancestors had hairy bodies but in the cold weather they were not warm enough. They had not learned to weave cloth, but they were smart. They saw that cats and foxes kept warm because they had fur coats. So the sensible cavemen took furry animal skins and wore them as clothing to keep out the cold.
People wore furry animal skins before the dawn of history. This was long before man learned to write. It was long before the human family learned how to weave cloth and make clothes of fabrics. For a long time, warm cloth was woven fron threads taken from furry animals. Cooler fabrics were woven from plant fibers.
Cats and bunnies, camels and sheep and all fur coated animals are mammals. And all the mammals are warm blooded animals. Their bodies give off heat, ,just as ours do, and their skin is always warm to touch. But in the cold weather, this body warmth would get blown away by air if it were not for fur coats.
A warm blooded animal. Needs to keep his body at a certain temperature, just as we do. Your body can do its work properly only when its temperature is about 96 degrees fahrenheit. The body of a warm blooded animplmakes enough heat to keep itself just warm enough. But in chilly weather, this heat is lost fester than the body can make it.
A fur coat prevents an animal's body heat from escaping. It acts like a blanket to stop the chilly air from steadling warmth from the skin. The fur of a cat is made from countless fine hairs. There are countless pockets of space betweeri the hairs. The cat's body uses some of its food to make heat, and the heat reaches the cat's skin. Pockets of warm air get trapped between the hairs, and the soft blanket of overlapping fur stops the cool breezes frown stealing the cat's body warmth and blowing it away.
The mammal's furry coat gets its warmth from his warm blooded body. But when the animal dies, its body stops making heat and the fur is as cold as the air around it. But we., too, are warm blooded manmals. When you wear a furry animal skin, the warmth from your body fills the spaces between the threads of hair. The fur becomes a warm blanket. It stops the heat of your skin frown being stolen by the chilly air.
Many modern fabrics are woven from man made threads, such as nylon. But we still use threads from animals and plants as our ancestors did. Wool is woven with threads from the f1eecy coat of the sheep. Linen and cool cotton are woven frame plant fibers. The spaces between the threads of woven cloth act like the spaces between the hairs of an animal's furry coat. They trap the heat given off by the body and stop it from escaping into the air.