I suppose there are some instances where it would be useful to se the cuticle of the hair, and certainly the presence or absence of the cuticle in a hair sample found at a crime scene could have some significance in terms of recreating differences or determining how the sample came to be present (e.g. If it was pulled out during a struggle or simply broke off in the normal course of daily activities, for instance), but from what I observed it would not be as useful in identifying individuals as the hair itself. The hair itself is also more useful in differentiating between species than is the cuticle, and certainly the differences in human and non-human hair make this distinction easily possible whether or not the cuticle is present, so its need in this experiment is not entirely clear to me.

The magnifying glass I used was somewhat useful...
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