|
Yup like mentioned above it's for balance and measuring the sizes of openings. They aren't completely vital but they do serve a purpose. I think they're also decorative. I know lions manes are indicitive of the more viril creatures. Watched a discovery channel recently about it. The lions with larger more magestic manes attracted more females. Its' possible (I'm just theorizing here) that whiskers may be related to the larger felines use of manes as well.
About a month ago our cat who was only 4 months at the time jumped on our counter. We do not allow her there for multiple reasons but she sneaked up anyway. She got too close to the pot of corn that I had boiling up there and singed her whiskers on half her face. Eyebrow whiskers got it too. They curled up and smelled horrid. I trimmed the melted knobs off of that side of the face. She seemed to adapt quite quickly to no whiskers on one side. The very next day my 3 yr old decided that she wanted to do like mommy and she trimmed off the other half of whiskers. It may have been the fact that she only got half trimmed at a time but she didn't seem to have too much trouble jumping or running ok. I did notice that stopping she'd end up tumbling head over heals a couple times. It was funny and she was uninjured thankfully.
__________________
"Always learn the rules so that you can break them properly." Dalai Lama
My Karma just ran over your Dogma. 
|