An Elephant Is Blind Without Its Whiskers

Every elephant carries about 1,000 whiskers on its trunk, and a new study found they are essential for sensing the world. With thick skin and poor eyesight, elephants rely on these hairs for many daily tasks. The animals cannot regrow lost whiskers, so each one is a permanent sensory receptor; the study identifying the whiskers’ special structure was published Thursday in Science.

Unlike rats and other mammals that actively whisk, elephants lack the muscles to move their trunk hairs, leaving them essentially stationary. "Elephant whiskers are aliens," said Andrew Schulz of the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems. To investigate how stationary whiskers could still be sensitive, a multidisciplinary team examined hairs from baby and adult Asian elephants that had died and been donated by a zoo veterinarian; they did not pluck whiskers from living animals.

Rather than testing only the middle of a hair, the researchers mapped geometry, stiffness and porosity along the entire length using electron microscopy and modeling.

elephant whiskers, trunk hairs, sensory receptor, max planck, science journal, asian elephants, electron microscopy, whisker structure, zoo veterinarian, stationary whiskers