I’m not a cat or anything, but how much would I have to lick my own body to generate a decent-sized hairball? I’d say I’m of moderately-above-average hairiness.
More than it takes to get to the tootsie-roll center of a tootsie pop.
More than I can count.
You should make The World Record Books with such an achievement…IF you live that long.
What a noble ambition! :rolleyes:
Sheesh!
This made me think of bezoars.
Human head hair has a density of about 15,000 hairs per square inch
Cat fur has a density of about 60,000 hairs per square inch
A human tongue has a surface area of about 4 square inches
A cat tongue has a surface area of about 1 square inch
A shorthair cat’s fur is about 3/4" long
Human hair length varies.
The effect of hairlength on hairball formation is highly nonlinear; short hairs collect on the tongue better, while longer hairs are more tangly.
Would you be generating this hairball externally, or going the bezoar route? If the latter, I’d expect long hair to be a much more efficient substrate.
Let’s find out.
A-one, a-two, a-three…
HAAAACCCCKKKKK!
A-three.
(On preview, someone already made that joke. Damn. But I like mine. :))
This one strikes me as possibly frivolous. Moved to MPSIMS.
samclem. GQ moderator
There’s a decent sixed hairball in the shower drain every day after I wash my hair. But that’s hair from my head, and it’s pretty long, so maybe that doesn’t count.
You have the wrong kind of tongue. Cat’s tongues have little one-way rasps, sort of like velcro, to grab the hair. Plus, the bulk of your hair is in places you can’t reach. Most cases of human hairballs result from people habitually nibbling on their locks, rather than licking themselves.
You might also have a problem in that the rate of hair accretion might be slow enough so that your digestive system could remove it faster than you can increment it with your tongue.