What are horses whiskers?
Whiskers are the coarse hairs that grow around the nostrils and lips on a horse’s muzzle.
What is the purpose of whiskers?
What is the purpose of whiskers?
Whiskers have far more nerves than regular hairs which makes them incredibly sensitive. They can sense magnetic fields, air movements, spaces around the horse, and the distance from objects. Providing sensory feedback, they act as a sort of radar to locate other horses, food and water, and even work out the distance from potential hazards, the temperature, and whether an object is a solid or a liquid.
Each whisker is linked to a specific sensitive area in the cerebral cortex, which shows just how important whiskers are as sensory organs that help horses navigate their surroundings.
Foals are born with whiskers as they grow while the foal is inside its mother’s womb.
The whiskers are soft and fine when a foal is born, but they quickly grow longer and become coarser, even just a few days after the foal is born.
Horses with whiskers can avoid obstacles and avoid bumping into fences because they can sense and gain an awareness of what is in their surroundings.
Whiskers are also useful in the stable; a horse with whiskers does not bump into the wall or the waterer, as a horse with trimmed whiskers may sometimes do.
This should make us all think twice before deciding to trim a horse’s whiskers purely for cosmetic purposes.
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