Why don't HUMANS have proper WHISKERS like most other mammals?
We are, in fact, one of only a handful of mammals that DON'T have whiskers ('vibrissae'): it's us, rhinos, some whales, dolphins & apes.
Even most aquatic mammals have them.
First, we need to understand how they work...
(📷: Salix)
We are, in fact, one of only a handful of mammals that DON'T have whiskers ('vibrissae'): it's us, rhinos, some whales, dolphins & apes.
Even most aquatic mammals have them.
First, we need to understand how they work...
(📷: Salix)
Comments
Those things are stiff, deeply rooted, and can sense changes in air currents from 2 miles away. 😜
Some whiskers actively 'sweep' ("whisk"), while others only passively detect. The whisking muscles are some of the fastest known: acting 25 times/second in mice.
Our ancestors lost their whisker genes at least 800,000 years ago & this coincides with development in the hominin brain for increased fingertip (touch) sensitivity.
It would seem that fingertips replaced whiskers: we weren't exploring the world with our faces first as a mouse might do. We used our eyes & hands.
A similar replacement may explain the cetaceans: toothed whales developed echolocation.
Kind of interesting that we end up having a secondary sex characteristic get extemely prominent imitating giant whiskers when we also lost functional whiskers.
(Especially given the orangutan example, they've got beards.)
Only *some* populations of mountain gorillas have beards (Virunga?), orangs have prominent ones.
Facial hair is still pretty prominent in female gorillas (from what I can see), especially compared to humans and orangutans.
I'm not sure I understand chimp facial hair given your comments elsewhere in the thread.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7671116/
We all found other 'sensory packages' & left our whiskers behind. Well... some of us did, anyway.
A fascinating read.
And if in after-modern amurrica there would be laws for women not to wear their whiskers male-style...
Would make us more honest.
Trichromia evolved early in the Old World monkeys.
https://www.genengnews.com/topics/omics/evolution-of-humans-full-color-vision-brought-to-light/
It does have a very 'engineered' feel to it, as so many evolved structures do!
Yes, it's us and some OTHER apes, but not all apes. As I understand it, the white hairs you see below are in fact passive micro-vibrissae on the face of a chimp.
Orangutans lack them entirely, like us (I think!).