However, once pseudo-science is accepted by people, it can cause a great deal of trouble. Real science often finds itself in the position of being unable to refute the pseudo-science effectively.
Review of Fang Zhouzi's "Why Don't Elephants Have Fur?"
Submitted by: Aiwan'er
Recently, I heard that Mr. Fang Zhouzi has published a new popular science book titled "Why Don't Elephants Have Fur - Fang Zhouzi Solves Scientific Mysteries." As someone who has always been interested in China's popular science cause and followed Mr. Fang's work, I immediately went online to GOOGLE for information about this book.
On Baidu Encyclopedia, I saw that the Dolphin Publishing House, which published the book "Why Don't Elephants Have Fur - Fang Zhouzi Solves Scientific Mysteries," introduced it as follows in the new book introduction: This book carefully selects 96 puzzles that people easily overlook or are misled by. It is a collection of beautiful popular science articles written by Fang Zhouzi in the past two years, published in newspapers such as the "China Youth Daily." The content involves fascinating life phenomena, interesting scientific discoveries, little-known stories from the history of science, and scientific issues closely related to real life. These articles are rich in knowledge, fun, thought-provoking, and practical. Fang Zhouzi meticulously analyzes these puzzles one by one, clearly explaining the scientific truths behind them with evidence. At the same time, he guides readers to think critically, enhancing the pleasure of reading and sharpening their discernment.
The editor recommends: Fraud fighter Fang Zhouzi solves 96 puzzles that people easily overlook or are misled by. This is a textbook for children to apply science and a reference book for adults to distinguish right from wrong, combining knowledge, fun, thoughtfulness, and practicality. Missing out on this book would be your loss.
(Here, I can't help but ask the editor and fraud fighter Fang Zhouzi: Are these 96 puzzles that people easily overlook or are misled by solved by Fang Zhouzi?)
In the media review section, I saw the names of Sima Nan and Chai Jing. Sima strongly recommended: In today's China, if I were to recommend only one popular science writer, "Fang Zhouzi" would be the name I blurt out without hesitation. The reason is simple: he is reliable, diligent, knowledgeable, and increasingly interesting.
Source:
Baidu Encyclopedia - Why Don't Elephants Have Fur - Fang Zhouzi Solves Scientific Mysteries
After reading the glowing text introduction above, I couldn't help but feel an urgent desire to see this book. I can't miss it; I don't want to lose out!
Since I am abroad, I had to immediately GOOGLE the main article of the book, which must also be the best article in the book, "Why Don't Elephants Have Fur?" I wanted to read it eagerly.
Unexpectedly, my eagerness was blocked, and I had to express my thoughts.
After reading Mr. Fang's masterpiece "Why Don't Elephants Have Fur?", I was completely confused: Do elephants have fur or not?
From the title of Mr. Fang's article, it seems that elephants should be hairless. Mr. Fang's masterpiece begins with a discussion of proboscideans and mentions elephant hair only at the end of the second paragraph. His vague and contradictory statement reads, "Elephants have another characteristic that few people notice, which is that their body hair is extremely sparse. Having body hair is one of the characteristics of mammals, and over 99% of terrestrial mammals have fur. Elephants are rare exceptions."
Are elephants' hairs sparse, or do they have no hair at all? Is having body hair a major characteristic of mammals? Are elephants really the exception? Where does the 99% figure come from?
Next, Mr. Fang refutes a scientific enthusiast's evolutionary view: that as ancestral elephants evolved into modern elephants, their body size increased, reducing the density of hair follicles, naturally making the elephant's body hair sparse. Subsequently, he mentions elephant hair for the second and final time, "One factor why elephants don't grow hair is climate. However, many mammals living in the same place as elephants, such as zebras, giraffes, and lions, have body hair. Why has the elephant's body hair severely regressed?"
Mr. Fang's contradiction remains: Do elephants not grow hair, or has their body hair severely regressed?
Unable to consult Mr. Fang, I turned to answers.com for clarification.
I asked: Do elephants have hair?
The answer: Yes. Asian elephants have more hair than African elephants.
Mr. Fang's article is titled "Why Don't Elephants Have Fur?" but the entire text mentions only once that the vague factor for elephants not growing hair is climate. Are there other reasons why elephants don't grow hair?
Subsequently, Mr. Fang spends three paragraphs discussing animal heat dissipation starting from volume and surface area. He writes, "An elephant's volume is approximately 30 times that of a lion, meaning it produces about 30 times the body heat. However, the total skin area of an elephant is roughly only 10 times that of a lion, leaving 20 times the heat that needs to be dissipated. Therefore, unlike lions, elephants cannot retain body hair that hinders heat dissipation. Similarly, the second-largest rhinoceros and the third-largest hippopotamus also lack body hair."
My intuition tells me that while elephants are large, their volume cannot possibly be 30 times that of a lion.
Please look at a photo of an elephant and lion performance. Do you think the elephant's volume is 30 times that of a lion?
Photo source:
These numbers—30, 20, and 10—where do they come from?
Do rhinoceroses and hippos really lack hair? I consulted answers.com again.
I asked: Do hippos have hair?
The answer: Yes, but they don’t have a lot of hair. All mammals have hair.
Mr. Fang then writes, "An elephant's volume is approximately twice that of a rhinoceros, but its surface area is only about 1.5 times larger."
Is an elephant's volume approximately twice that of a rhinoceros? My basic knowledge of animals tells me that elephants are larger than rhinoceroses, but not twice as large. There is photographic evidence.
Photo source:
Subsequently, Mr. Fang discusses elephants' ears in three paragraphs. He writes, "The largest known mammoth ears were only 0.3 meters long, while the ears of African forest elephants can be up to 1.8 meters long." Is it appropriate to measure an elephant's ears (which are not noses) in length? Isn't 1.8 meters too long? Did Mr. Fang mean that the area of the elephant's earlobe is 1.8 square meters?
Then, Mr. Fang deduces, "This shows that the large ears of elephants evolved as heat dissipaters, and their other functions (such as male elephants spreading their ears during mating competition) are byproducts."
Regarding the function of elephant ears, I consulted an authoritative website on elephants, Elephant Information Repository, which describes them as follows:
"The ears serve several important functions in elephants. When an elephant perceives a threat, it spreads its ears wide on either side of its head, creating a huge frontal area.
The ears play a very important role for elephants in regulating their body temperature."
Source:
Here, I would like to ask Mr. Fang: To emphasize the unique heat-dissipating function of elephants' ears, is it necessary to devalue their other functions? Do you have evidence that their other functions are byproducts of evolution? Is your claim scientific?
Then, Mr. Fang presents a rule: "Animals in cold regions generally have smaller protrusions such as ears, known as Allen's Rule."
And then, "Though elephants may look strange, the scientific principles behind them are actually quite simple and not strange at all." The article concludes elegantly.
In summary, Fang Zhouzi's "Why Don't Elephants Have Fur?" lacks a clear focus, has a disorganized structure, and gives the impression of being hastily written.
Mr. Fang did not adequately explain the scientific issue he intended to popularize but instead raised more questions for me:
1. Do elephants have hair or not?
2. Why don't elephants have fur?
3. Is it because elephants have large ears for heat dissipation that they don't grow fur?
At the same time, I question many of the numbers used in Fang Zhouzi's "Why Don't Elephants Have Fur?" First, they seem questionable, and second, Mr. Fang did not cite their sources.
It appears that Mr. Fang places particular emphasis on the ears of elephants. If the purpose of "Why Don't Elephants Have Fur?" is to explain that elephants have large ears as heat dissipaters (so they don't need to sweat through their skin pores to dissipate heat and therefore don't grow fur—I'm taking the liberty of summarizing Mr. Fang's argument), then I must remind Mr. Fang that elephants don't just rely on their ears for heat dissipation; their skin is also an important heat dissipater. An elephant's wrinkled skin increases its surface area, helping it dissipate heat and cool down.
The Complete Elephant Anatomy describes this as follows: "As we all know, an elephant's skin is very wrinkled. These wrinkles serve a purpose too. They help the elephant control its body temperature and stay cool. Wrinkles increase the surface area of the skin so when the elephant bathes in water, there is more skin to wet. When the elephant comes out of the water, the cracks and crevices of the wrinkles trap the water, and since it takes longer to evaporate in the heat, it keeps the elephant's skin moist longer than it would if it had smooth skin."
Source:
Elephant hair grows on the skin. When discussing why elephants don't grow fur, shouldn't we pay attention to their skin? A distinctive feature of elephant skin is that it is thick and wrinkled, which clearly makes it unsuitable for hair growth. Unfortunately, Mr. Fang's article makes no mention of elephant skin.
Mr. Fang's "Why Don't Elephants Have Fur?" was published in the China Youth Daily and later compiled into a book. The publishing industry and media have highly recommended this book. Their evaluations are rarely seen in the world. Because of this, and because the readers of popular science books are mostly children, I question this article and book.
For my doubts, will fraud fighter Fang Zhouzi, whose obsession with truth is akin to a cleaning ball, respond? Can the China Youth Daily and Dolphin Publishing House provide some feedback?
A few days after completing this article, I was shocked to discover that Fang Zhouzi's "Why Don't Elephants Have Fur?" won the "Beijing News 2010 Best Books" award in the lifestyle and art category (there were five categories, each with one best book).
I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the "Beijing News Annual Best Books" has become one of the benchmark evaluation activities in China's publishing and reading circles, with immense influence.
Among the members of the Beijing News book review team, I see the names of renowned scholars, writers, and cultural critics, as well as multiple editors and journalists from the Beijing News. Here, I would like to ask them: Is "Why Don't Elephants Have Fur?" the best book in the lifestyle and art category in China in 2010? What criteria did you use to select it?
"Beijing News 2010 Annual Best Books" announced results today
Attached article: Why Don't Elephants Have Fur?
Why don't elephants have fur? By Fang Zhouzi
Perhaps due to their frequent appearance on television, movies, and picture books, few people realize that elephants are among the most unique animals. How unique are they? Zoologists, based on close kinship relationships, sparingly classify the over 5400 species of mammals into 29 orders, and elephants occupy one order—the Proboscidea. The Proboscidea contains only three extant species: the Asian elephant, the African bush elephant, and the African forest elephant, with no other extant species able to be grouped with elephants in the same order. In contrast, our human order, the Primates, contains 350 species, meaning we have far more close relatives than elephants.
The uniqueness of elephants is first manifested in their immense size. They are the largest land animals still in existence, reaching heights of up to 4 meters and weights of up to 7 tons, twice the size of the second-largest land animal, the rhinoceros. Their shape is also distinctive, with the most noticeable features being their long trunks and massive ears. Another less-observed characteristic of elephants is the extreme sparseness of their body hair. Having fur is one of the defining traits of mammals, with over 99% of terrestrial mammals possessing it, making elephants a rare exception.
A science enthusiast noticed this point. I received a short paper from him titled "Why is the body hair of elephants so sparse?" The general idea was that as ancestral elephants evolved into larger sizes, the density of hair follicles naturally decreased significantly, leading to the sparsity of elephant hair. This explanation doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Being large in size doesn't necessarily mean having sparse hair. In fact, the now-extinct woolly mammoth, which lived 10,000 years ago, had dense, long hair. If necessary, existing elephants could also grow fur.
Woolly mammoths lived in cold climates and needed hair to keep warm, whereas existing elephants all live in tropical regions where such insulation isn't necessary. So, one factor contributing to elephants not having fur is the climate. However, many mammals living in the same areas as elephants, such as zebras, giraffes, and lions, have fur. Why has the body hair of elephants severely regressed?
Mammals are warm-blooded animals that must maintain their body temperature within a specific range to ensure normal physiological activity—for example, an elephant's body temperature must be maintained at around 36 degrees Celsius. Any deviation higher or lower poses a serious risk to life. Body heat is generated during cellular metabolism, and the total amount produced is almost fixed. However, environmental temperatures fluctuate constantly. If the air temperature is lower than body temperature, preventing heat loss becomes crucial, which is the primary function of fur. Conversely, if the air temperature exceeds body temperature, finding ways to dissipate heat becomes essential.
Elephants live in some of the hottest regions on Earth, so dissipating heat is more critical than retaining warmth. Since body heat originates from cellular metabolic processes, the more cells there are, the more heat is generated, meaning the larger the body volume, the more heat is produced. Heat dissipation mainly occurs through the skin, and the larger the body surface area, the faster the heat dissipates. However, as animals grow larger, their volume and body surface area do not increase proportionally: volume increases cubically, while surface area increases quadratically, with the cubic increase outpacing the quadratic one. For instance, if you inflate a balloon so its radius doubles, its volume becomes eight times the original, while its surface area becomes only four times the original.
Due to the disproportionate growth of volume and surface area, considering the immense size of elephants, heat dissipation becomes a severe problem. An elephant's volume is approximately 30 times that of a lion, meaning it generates roughly 30 times the body heat, yet its total skin area is only about 10 times that of a lion, leaving 20 times the heat that needs to be dissipated. Therefore, unlike lions, elephants cannot retain body hair that hinders heat dissipation. Similarly, the second-largest rhinoceros and the third-largest hippopotamus also lack body hair.
An elephant's volume is approximately twice that of a rhinoceros, but its surface area is only about 1.5 times larger. Removing body hair suffices for rhinoceroses, but for elephants, additional methods of heat dissipation are required. What methods? Growing a pair of large ears. An elephant's ears are not only large but also thin, filled with blood vessels, allowing blood passing through them to dissipate heat easily. Especially when flapped, the temperature of the blood in the ears drops quickly, lowering the blood temperature by 5 degrees Celsius, and the cooled blood circulates throughout the body, helping to reduce the overall body temperature.
Of the three existing types of elephants, the Asian elephant is the smallest, living in relatively northern regions and forests, where the temperature is lower; the African bush elephant is the largest, living on sun-exposed tropical grasslands where the temperature is highest; and the African forest elephant has a size and habitat temperature between the two. The ears of these three types of elephants correspondingly follow the pattern that the primary function of elephant ears is heat dissipation: the African bush elephant has the largest ears, followed by the African forest elephant, and then the Asian elephant, which has the smallest ears.
The woolly mammoth was larger than existing elephants but, living in icy cold climates, its main challenge was how to retain heat. Thus, it had to grow long hair, and its ears didn't need to be large. Indeed, compared to existing elephants, the woolly mammoth was larger in every way except for its ears, which were small. The largest known woolly mammoth ears were only 0.3 meters long, whereas the ears of African bush elephants can reach up to 1.8 meters. This shows that the large ears of elephants evolved primarily as heat dissipaters, with other functions (such as male elephants displaying dominance by spreading their ears during mating competitions) being secondary products.
Animals living in colder regions are generally larger than their counterparts in warmer regions, known as Bergmann's Rule. However, animals living in colder regions tend to have smaller protrusions such as ears, known as Allen's Rule. Both rules essentially summarize surface-level phenomena; maintaining or dissipating heat is the true underlying factor.
Despite their strange appearance, elephants embody simple and straightforward scientific principles.
October 3, 2007
(The China Youth Daily, October 10, 2007)
Source:
gdian/elephant.txt