Why whiskers are so important to a cat

Have you ever played with a kitten? When I stayed in a hostel for my studies, I was surrounded by a family of cats that had made the hostel their home. It was fun to see kittens tumbling over each other in the hallways and climbing the rocks and trees at the entrance. Apart from their quirky natures, another thing that fascinated me was their long whiskers. These long, stiff hairs are some of their most defining features, but whiskers aren’t only present for cuteness!

A cat’s whiskers are present not just on the cheeks but also under the chin, above the eyebrows, and even behind their front paws. The follicles from where these whiskers grow are surrounded by sensory cells and nerves that connect the hairs directly to the brain. This makes them so sensitive that they can detect even the smallest vibrations; just like antennae!

Sensitive whiskers allow cats to expertly hunt their prey even when it’s pitch dark
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Accurate detection

Cats don’t have perfect eyesight and can’t see objects nearby very well, but you never see them knock into things. In fact, when a cat pounces on a mouse, you can be sure that it will catch it. But how can a cat do all this without excellent eyesight? Whiskers! A cat’s whiskers can accurately detect the shape, size, and distance to objects surrounding it simply by the way air flows around them! The whiskers are so sensitive that, even when a speck of dust falls on the whiskers above the eyebrows, a cat will feel it and respond by blinking or shaking its head. These sensitive whiskers allow cats to expertly hunt their prey even when it’s pitch dark, making them master hunters of the night!

Cats love squeezing into impossibly narrow spaces. In the hostel, our rooms had bars on the windows, but that didn’t deter cats from climbing inside and hiding in my cupboard! In a documentary film called Inside the Mind of a Cat, Dr. Bruce Kornreich, Director of the Cornell Feline Health Centre in the U.S. experimented on how small a hole a cat can get through. As the cats kept getting through smaller and smaller holes, he explained that a cat can tell if it can get through a hole just by its whiskers. As the whiskers touch the edges of the hole, they send signals to the cat’s brain on how wide the hole is and whether it can fit through. So, the next time a cat squeezes through that narrow hole to get inside your kitchen, blame its whiskers.