Do you know Hair and Nails grow even after death?
Folklore
from earliest times abounds with ghoulish tales of the coffins of clean-shaven
or bald men being opened to reveal corpses shrouded in luxuriant hair and
beards. Formerly neatly manicured fingernails are reported to have reached
Chinese mandarin lengths. The New York Medical Record in 1877 carried a report
by a Dr Caldwell of Iowa, describing an
exhumation which Caldwell
said he attended. He claimed that the hair and beard of the previously clean-shaven
corpse had burst open the coffin and was growing through the cracks.
Such stories, however, belong to the
realm of folklore, for there is absolutely no scientific basis for this belief.
The only way in which growth of human tissue can take place is by cell
multiplication, and the only way that can occur is for the cells to receive a
plentiful supply of oxygen. When the heart and lungs cease to function at
death, the body no longer receives oxygen and cellular activity stops. Any
independent continuance of hair or nail cell activity would be momentary and
certainly immeasurable. The shrinkage of the skin surrounding the hair
follicles of scalp and beard, and that of the fingertips after death might
reveal a further 1/16 inch or so of existing hair or nail – but by no means
sufficient to burst a lid off a coffin.
Elephants never forgot
There
is apparently some truth in the belief that elephants never forget. In a
experiment, Professor B. Rensch of Munster
University in Germany showed that an elephant recalled
a number of tests with a 73-100 per cent accuracy even after the lapse of a
year. The Experiment – in which the elephant was taught to associate certain
symbols with food – proved that although elephants are not very intelligent,
and learn extremely slowly, once they have mastered something it will remain in
their memories for a considerable length of time.
There is, however, no foundation in
the belief that elephants are afraid of mice.
Crocodiles shed tears
The phrase ‘crocodile tears’ meaning hypocritical
grief, has been used in literature and everyday speech for hundreds of years.
It stems from an early belief that the crocodile wept while devouring its
victims. In his De Proprietatibus Rerum, the 13th century
English friar Bartholomaeus Anglicus wrote of the belief:
“If the crocodile findeth a man by the
brim of the water, or by the cliff, he slayeth him if he may, and then weep
upon him and swallow him at last.
The belief that the crocodile is
unhappy at killing its prey is quiet erroneous, of course, but crocodiles do
shed ‘tear’ as a simple reflex action when their jaws are opened wide – as we
might when we yawn. And so there is some basis to the old myth after all.
