TOUCH 209 



the hairs give a sensation of touch with things that are not 

 in actual contact with the skin. Each hair grows from a 

 small pit in the skin and the tactile nerves end both at the 

 base of the hair within it and in the walls of the surrounding 

 pit. The nerve-endings are particularly numerous round the 

 roots of the long hairs that grow on the snouts and elsewhere 

 in mammals. These long hairs are popularly called whiskers, 

 but they are not the equivalents of the facial hairs that adorn 

 the countenance of man. In addition to those on the snout, 

 mainly on the upper lip, these special hairs commonly occur 

 above each eye, under the chin, on the wrists and heels, and 

 less commonly elsewhere. Mankind is without these special 

 hairs, except for the characters in certain popular strip 

 cartoons — had we appendages such as the cat's eyebrow 

 whiskers we could more easily avoid bumping our heads in 

 going through low doorways. 



The "whiskers" are usually assumed to be simple organs 

 of touch, but in some animals they may be something more. 

 In many of the aquatic mammals they are very long and 

 thick, so thick that in some large seals they resemble quills. 

 In the seals, the otters and the African River Shrew [Pota- 

 mogale) the prominent whiskers on the upper lips are set in 

 conspicuous pads of tissue that thicken the lips and give a 

 characteristic shape to the snout. The bottoms of the pits 

 from which these whiskers sprout are enlarged and form 

 bulbous swellings, each supplied with a large nerve branch. 

 These mammals are not very closely related to each other 

 in the zoological classification, but they have one point in 

 common, they are all aquatic. Many of them are able to 

 find their food in water that is so turbid with suspended 

 mud that little or no light penetrates more than a few inches 

 or feet below the surface. They are thus prevented from 

 hunting by sight, and we know that with their noses shut 

 they cannot hunt by smell ; how then do they find their 

 food? The only possibility seems to be that they do so by 

 touch at a distance, using their highly specialized whiskers 

 to detect turbulences in the water caused by other objects, 

 including their prey. There appear to be no experiments 

 recorded on this matter, and it will be interesting to know 

 the results of any tests that may be made. The whales and 



