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Information about Vibrissa

“Whisker” redirects here. For other uses, see Whisker (disambiguation).


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A house cat's prominent vibrissae are known as whiskers.
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A Patagonian fox has vibrissae on its nose, cheeks and above its eyes.
Vibrissae (singular: vibrissa), or whiskers, are specialized hairs, usually employed for tactile sensation, but can also refer to the stiff feathers near the mouths of some birds. Vibrissae hairs commonly grow around the nostrils and other parts of the face in most mammals, commonly on cats as 'whiskers', as well as on the forelegs and feet. Vibrissae are usually thicker and stiffer than other types of hair.[1][2]

Vibrissae consist of inert material and contain no nerves, but do have special sensory cells associated with them.[1] Vibrissae are different from other hairs mainly because they are implanted in a special follicle sealed by a capsule of blood, called a blood sinus. Touching a vibrissa causes it to bend, and the blood in the sinus is pushed to one side or the other. The blood amplifies the movement and allows the mechanoreceptors at the base of the vibrissa to detect extremely small deflections.[4] In some mammals, the follicles of vibrissae are surrounded by a highly developed sheath of muscle tissue which can be used to move them, such as in the case of whiskers found on cats, dogs and other mammals. Whiskers can grow extremely long; the length of a chinchilla's whiskers can be up to a third of its body length.

Vibrissae offer an advantage to animals that do not always have sight to rely on to navigate or to find food, or when the usefulness of non-tactile senses is limited. Some animals, such as house mice, can even detect air movements with their vibrissae. A large part of the brain of many mammals is devoted to processing the nerve impulses from vibrissae because it is important to their survival. Information from the vibrissae is transmitted and processed through the trigeminal nerve into the brainstem and thalamus before relaying to the barrel cortex of the brain. Mammals use a great deal of energy to keep the follicles housing their whiskers warm and ready to use. Some animals - mainly rodents - actively palpate their vibrissea, a process known as whisking, whilst others use them merely as passive sensors.

References

1. ^ Weldon Owen Pty Ltd. (1993). Encyclopedia of animals - Mammals, Birds, Reptiles, Amphibians. Reader's Digest Association, Inc. pg. 18. ISBN 1875137491.
2. ^ Vibrissa, medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com, undated (accessed 20 January,2007)
3. ^ Weldon Owen Pty Ltd. (1993). Encyclopedia of animals - Mammals, Birds, Reptiles, Amphibians. Reader's Digest Association, Inc. pg. 18. ISBN 1875137491.
4. ^ Hair, animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu, undated (accessed 20 January,2007)
There are several kinds of whisker :
  • An element of box plots.
  • vibrissa: a hair on the face of a mammal, used for sensing the surroundings
  • facial hair: hair on the face of a human
  • whisker (metallurgy): a strong hair-shaped protrusion on a metal's surface

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Hair is a filamentous outgrowth of protein, found only on mammals. It projects from the epidermis, though it grows from hair follicles deep in the dermis. Although many other organisms, especially insects, show filamentous outgrowths, these are not considered "hair".
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Tactition is the sense of pressure perception.

Explanation

In the skin there are different receptors responsible for the detection of light against heavy pressure, as well as brief against sustained pressure.
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Feathers are one of the epidermal growths that form the distinctive outer covering, or plumage, on birds. They are the outstanding characteristic that distinguishes the Class Aves from all other living groups. Other Theropoda also had feathers (see Feathered dinosaurs).
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Aves
Linnaeus, 1758

Orders

About two dozen - see section below

Birds (class Aves) are bipedal, warm-blooded, egg-laying vertebrate animals.
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nostril (or naris, pl. nares) is one of the two channels of the nose, from the point where they bifurcate to the external opening. In birds and mammals, they contain branched bones or cartilages called turbinates, whose function is to warm air on inhalation and
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Mammalia
Linnaeus, 1758

Subclasses & Infraclasses
  • Subclass †Allotheria*
  • Subclass Prototheria
  • Subclass Theria

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F. s. catus

Trinomial name
Felis silvestris catus
(Linnaeus, 1758)

Synonyms
Felis lybica invalid junior synonym
Felis catus invalid junior synonym[2]

The cat (
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A nerve is an enclosed, cable-like bundle of axons (the long, slender projection of a neuron). Neurons are sometimes called nerve cells, though this term is technically imprecise since many neurons do not form nerves, and nerves also include the glial cells that
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A hair follicle is part of the skin that grows hair by packing old cells together. Attached to the follicle is a sebaceous gland, a tiny sebum-producing gland found everywhere except on the palms, lips and soles of the feet.
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The word capsule, or encapsulation, may refer to:
  • Capsule (anatomy), a cover or envelope partly or wholly surrounding a structure.
  • Capsule (fruit), a type of dry fruit like the poppy, iris or foxglove.

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Blood is a specialized biological fluid consisting of red blood cells (also called RBCs or erythrocytes), white blood cells (also called leukocytes) and platelets (also called thrombocytes) suspended in a complex fluid medium known as blood plasma.
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Sinus may refer to:

In anatomy, where a sinus is a sac or cavity in any organ or tissue:
  • Paranasal sinus, an air cavity in the cranial bones, especially those near the nose
  • Sinus (anatomy), description of the general term

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A mechanoreceptor is a sensory receptor that responds to mechanical pressure or distortion. There are four main types in the glabrous skin of humans: Pacinian corpuscles, Meissner's corpuscles, Merkel's discs, and Ruffini corpuscles.
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MUSCLE (multiple sequence comparison by log-expectation) is public domain, multiple sequence alignment software for protein and nucleotide sequences.
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Chinchilla
Bennett, 1829

Range map of Chinchilla species.
Red dots = Last known families (Ch. lanigera).


Chinchillas
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Senses are the physiological methods of perception. The senses and their operation, classification, and theory are overlapping topics studied by a variety of fields, most notably neuroscience, cognitive psychology (or cognitive science), and philosophy of perception.
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M. musculus

Binomial name
Mus musculus
Linnaeus, 1758

The common House Mouse (Mus musculus) is one of the most numerous species of the genus Mus
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In animals, the brain or encephalon (Greek for "in the skull"), is the control center of the central nervous system, responsible for behavior. The brain is located in the head, protected by the skull and close to the primary sensory apparatus of vision, hearing,
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The trigeminal nerve (the fifth cranial nerve, also called the fifth nerve or simply V) is responsible for sensation in the face. It is similar to the spinal nerves C2–S5, which are responsible for sensation in the rest of the body.
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The brain stem is the lower part of the brain, adjoining and structurally continuous with the spinal cord. Most sources consider the pons, medulla oblongata, and midbrain all to be part of the brainstem.
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For the computer game developer, see Thalamus Ltd.


The thalamus (from Greek θάλαμος = bedroom, chamber, IPA= /ˈθæləməs/) is a pair and symmetric part of the brain.
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The barrel cortex is the part of the somatosensory cortex of rodents where sensory inputs from the whiskers in the contralateral side of the body are represented. Inputs from the thalamus carrying information from a given whisker terminate in discrete areas of layer IV forming
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Rodentia
Bowdich, 1821

Suborders

Sciuromorpha
Castorimorpha
Myomorpha
Anomaluromorpha
Hystricomorpha
Rodentia is an order of mammals also known as rodents
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