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Man lacks a prominent physical trait common to most other mammals: whiskers. Not those portrayed on the Smith Brothers cough drops box, but a countable number of long sensory hairs called vibrissae, arranged in a pattern on the maxilla. All hairs have sensory functions, but vibrissae are the ultimate sensory detection machine. Containing no nerves, they sit in a special follicle surrounded by blood, deeper in the dermis than ordinary hairs, within a complex vascular dermal plate called the mystacial (moustache) pad. When an object causes the vibrissae to bend, the surrounding blood is displaced, allowing mechanoreceptors at the base to detect extremely small deflections, including even ai…