Walruses have the most useful mustaches in the world.

They don't look great, I won't pretend they do.

The hairs are yellow, long, wiry, sparse, and uneven.

The hairs spill over their front lip in a way that is not aesthetically pleasing.

And the females wear them too, in case you're wondering if

walruses conform to traditional human beauty standards. Their mustache hairs are more formally

known as vibrisi, and they are highly specialized touch organs. These animals have weak eyesight,

and their hearing isn't particularly impressive, but their

mustaches, their mustaches are state-of-the-art sensory instruments.

These vibrisi have blood and nerves running through them.

They aren't simple hairs, and they are attached to muscles at their base.

They are so sensitive and so controllable. In a laboratory setting, waruses can detect and

discriminate between shapes as small as three millimeters using only their mustache. You basically

blindfold them, give them a bunch of minuscule shapes, triangles, squares,

circles, hexagons, and show them which one you're looking for, and then show them each one

individually, randomly, and train the animal to nod or shake their head when it's the right

one.

This obviously takes a degree of skill and great intelligence on the part of the walrus,

and it takes sensitivity.

But what is this mustache used for in the wild?

What is the point of having mustache superpowers?

Well, to understand that, we need to know more about the walrus' natural history.

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