A new seals’-eye view shows these specialized hairs in motion at sea
Scientists have long been in the dark about how deep-diving seals forage for their meals in pitch-black seas, and the answer may have been right under the animals’ nose all along: whiskers. With the help of a group of northern elephant seals in California’s Año Nuevo State Park, researchers have now seen this super specialized sensory system at work in the wild for the first time.
Seals in captivity have shown they can hunt with whiskers alone when blindfolded, so researchers had long suspected that this sensory system might be the key to the animals’ knack for low-light foraging. “But in natural conditions, animals will use all of the information from many sensory systems and integrate it to shape behavior in the wild.... They may use eyes; they may use whiskers; they may use hearing,” says U.C. Santa Cruz marine ecologist Taiki Adachi, the study’s lead author.
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