Vol. 12, Special Issue 7 (2023)

The shaft of guard hair in Elephant comprised of cuticle and cortex in all the samples examined. Medulla was present in the hair shaft of back region and tail region. The cuticle pattern was smooth and colored while cortex pattern at tip was smooth whereas it was coarse in middle and base regions in all hair samples observed.

Cortex color varied from light brown to dark brown color. Cross sectional shape was round in hair of all the regions examined. Mean shaft diameter of neck was 244.80±6.10 µm and that of tail was 253.95±3.56 µm which varied significantly. Imbricate scale pattern with closely placed scales and were not overlapped. Imbricate scale pattern with rippled scale margins were observed in Scanning Electron Microscopic (SEM) studies. The number of scales per 100 µm length of the shaft were in range of 12 to 17. Scale width ranged between 5.87 µm to 10.90 µm.