Conservation and restoration of fur objects made from keratin, which is also the protein that makes up skin, feathers, nails, hooves, claws, and horns. "The way I think a lot of people understand fur versus hair is in the density of follicles," says Ross McPhee, Curator of the Department of Mammalogy at the American Museum of Natural History. "So for fur-bearing animals—which were converted into coats and so-forth—people always wanted it to be something that was very dense, so there’s the idea therefore that fur is dense, and it certainly is in [the] kinds of fur-bearers that we use for this purpose. Whereas hair is not
Flora and fauna of the Outer Hebrides there occasionally, but are more common off the West Beach. The grey seal now breeds on Hirta but did not do so before the 1930 evacuation. The beach at Village Bay in St Kilda is unusual in that its short stretch of summer sand recedes in winter, exposing the large boulders on which it rests. A survey of the beach in 1953 found only a single resident species, the crustacean isopod "Eurydice pulchra". Amongst the more exotic species found off the Outer Hebrides, is the giant squid ("Architeuthis") - specimens are occasionally washed up on the islands. There are only