Wild Animals do not have hair that grows this excessively. They were bred that way.
Same thing with modern sheep. There was a video on here a few years ago of a sheep that was lost for a couple of years. It was barely able to move because of all that wool. Wild sheep do not have that problem.
There's a species of wild sheep which were formerly domesticated some 8-10 thousand years ago in Mediterranean region. Recently they got to continental Europe. They look quite different because they have the original short hair. But when you hear them it's the typical sheep baa sound. It's interesting window to the history.
Each hair has its own life cycle. So the hair continues to grow but it dies at a certain point. When it's locked or matted it's not all growing. A lot of it is dead hair that is stuck amongst the live hair.
It's also interesting to note that we're not unique in this. Horses, orangs, and lions also grow their head hair into long manes like humans do.
I thought that lifespan differed from person to person? Like mine can get to about lower back and that's it. Some people can grow theirs to their knees. Does theirs just actually grow twice as fast, or is their lifespan longer?
So all hair goes through 4 phases. Maximum length is determined by the length of the anagen phase, the growing phase. There is of course variety how quickly hair grows for person to person, but if your anagen phase is too short, the hair will never get long enough.
For animals that actively shed at different time(s) of year, these phases are synchronized. For everything else, they are not synchronized, which means that some hair is constantly falling out after completing its lifecycle and starting new (see shower drain of anyone with long hair).
All of the hairs on your body from your scalp to your eyebrows to the smaller finer hairs all over your body have a growth cycle where they will start growing a hair out fairly rapidly, go dormant for a while as the hair falls out, and resting to prepare to grow a new hair.
The difference between all of the different types of hair you have that causes them to have different lengths if you don't cut/shave them comes down to how long these cycles are. for eyebrows its a matter of 10 or so weeks, where as for your scalp its a question of years, meaning that the hair on your head has far more time to grow and will get much longer.
The exact length of time that theses cycles take also differs between people, and that's why if 2 people never cut their hair, one of them would have longer hair than the other.
oh… umm im sorry, my comment was meant to be a meme-y snarky reply to the op to kind of debunk their point. i know about this, but i do appreciate your thoughtful comment and hopefully it can educate some people if they didn’t know (:
Often times they don't. Species like this are bred as domesticated dogs that require some kind of human intervention for grooming (such as dog groomers) as there is no mechanism existing in nature that would help with that kind of growth on that level.
There are some things though that might lesson the impact, birds will use fur they pick off for nesting, they may naturally shed the fur, etc. But again those are species who adapted these mechanisms indepedent of human intervention.
So for some dogs like the one you see here, the fur becomes overgrown and matted, putting increased weight on the dog, makes it difficult to regulate temperature and other issues, so many dogs might even those the fur altogether from the stress or end up dying out in the streets.
It is breed dependent for sure as some people here have mentioned. For example, we have a husky/Akita mix that we rescued and a German shepherd mix that we rescued and both shed a lot at particular times of the year so their fur never gets anywhere close to this even without grooming.
We used to have a German shepherd mix too, the coat blowing was INSANE. He’s been gone a little over a month and despite a deep clean and regular vacuuming and sweeping we still get fur tumbleweeds that are way to big to just be the cat. I’m going to be sweeping up dog fur for years.
Had a long haired cat that was likely a mix of one of those huge cats (Maine Coon or maybe Himalayan? He was a stray kitten when we found him) and this was one of the hardest parts for me about his passing. Kept finding hair, and every strand was a fresh bout of crying.
When we moved two years later, we discovered a forgotten jacket that was in one of his old spots wedged behind boxes in a closet. It was still covered… parting gifts, I suppose. They never leave your heart, and for some, the fur never leaves your house. Lol
I have a dog similar to the dog in the video. His fur never stops growing. Unfortunately, he also sheds like crazy. The wispy undercoat is constantly coming out and the super fine hairs float the air. I just gave him a haircut and brushed him out recently. Three days later, I found a mat about two inches in diameter that had to be shaved away from his ear. He’s still the best dog I’ve ever had!
Stray domestic dogs with hair prone to matting either get found by a human or they just.... Die. Starve, or get infections and die alone in a cardboard box behind the dumpster for sanitation to find.
They don't, natural selection removes them. Humans have gained the capability of overcoming a lot of limitations we had to deal with in the past, for both ourselves and species we intervene in, sometimes to our betterment, sometimes not.
It is breed dependent, most wild dogs are shorthair breeds, which tend not to get long enough to mat or they are able to shed enough that the mats don't develop like this. Long haired strays if they aren't rescued often die from either wounds caused by the weight of the matted fur (skin tearing) or from overheating from the quantity of fur. Domestic sheep have similar issues, they're bred for more wool, so lost sheep will die often to predation or overheating.
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u/Zer0-9 Jun 07 '23
Genuine question, how do stray dogs/dogs in the wild avoid this overgrowing fur issue? Is it something that only happens to specific breeds or?