Abe the Lion Tamer's hair has long been a statistical outlier in a number of ways. Most notably, I present the first official writeup of research on the subject performed over the past several years:

There is a semi-common hairstyle in which chopsticks or pencils are used to twist the hair back in a bun of sorts.

I estimate that in such a fashion, the average person could support 3-8 pencils in his or her hair for an extended period of time.

A google image search for "pencils in hair" shows a number of images; the hairdo sporting the most pencils is this:



I count 22 pencils in the photo, and extrapolate that nearly as many may be hidden in the back, bringing the total number up to 30.

A more thorough google images search reveals an average of 14.2 pencils displayed per unique photo (with 9 being the maximum for bearers of straight hair).

This gives us a range of pencil storage and pencil storage demonstration of 3-30 pencil capacity, with an average likely around 10-20.

Several years ago, a few amateur researchers decided to test the limits of Abe's hair by inserting pencils into it. After the addition of 52 pencils, no more could be found.

Alas, the hair was not of optimal length, and over the next few minutes several pencils fell out

More recently, a more rigorous study was attempted with a larger number of pencils and a larger amount of hair. Alas, only 175 pencils could be found, and these were all held in place quite nicely

A test of head inversion loosened no pencils; all stayed put


While the research used to acquire data on Abe's hair is not entirely new, the research on the general population's pencil storage ability was conducted specifically for this task, and only therein was the hair in question demonstrated to be a statistical outlier (175 lies far outside of the 3-30 range).