Might this study about whiskers in mice be educational for whiskered humans — about similar human capabilities they may be under-utilizing? The study is: “Detection and neural encoding of whisker-generated sounds in mice,” Ben Efron, Athanasios Ntelezos, Yonatan Katz, and Ilan Lamp, Current Biology, vol. 35, no. 6, 2025, pp. 1211-1226. The authors report: Whisking […]
Pinnipeds (for example seals) tend to have vibrissae (i.e. whiskers) of varying flexurality (stiffness), arranged in a mystacial (moustache-like) format. Warranting an experimental investigation: “This is the first comparative study on the mechanical properties of pinniped mystacial vibrissae.” – explain a team of researchers from Texas A&M university and West Chester University, US. The investigators […]
In order to clear any doubts regarding the comparative growth rates of the whiskers of harbor seals (Phoca vitulina) and Steller sea lions (Eumetopias jubatus), researchers at the Institute of Marine Science, University of Alaska Fairbanks, and the Mystic Aquarium, CT, U.S.A. performed a series of experiments in 2001. The whiskers of participant seals and […]