Many animals have a presentiment that it will soon rain or other weather changes. How do they do it? Until now, scientists cannot come to a consensus. But the majority of experts are inclined to the version that whiskers-whiskers help animals to learn about the strength and direction of the wind, temperature, air humidity for "making a weather forecast".
American biologists decided to test this theory by conducting an experiment on rats. The rodents were released onto a table with fans at the edges. The rats had to determine where the wind was blowing from when one of them turned on in a random order. If the choice was correct, then a treat was waiting for her in the hole next to the fan. The animals successfully coped with this task, after which vibrissae were cut off to see how the result would change.
Deprived of their whiskers, rats were still guided by the wind in search of food, but the number of errors increased by 20%. According to Matthew Graff, one of the authors of the study, this proves that rats tried to catch the wind even with damaged vibrissae, preferring them to other, healthy organs of touch.
The mechanism of operation of the whiskers-vibrissae consists in pressure on the receptors at the time of flexion. The experiment showed that these sensations are actually used by rats to obtain information about air oscillations and their sources. Of course, this way of learning about weather parameters is not the only one, but scientists have come to the conclusion that it is key for rats and other animals and, probably, it is vibrissae that underlie the synoptic talents of animals, their ability to avoid negative weather events and find food.
The research article was published in Science Advances.