ArticleJournal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology2014
Characterisation of whisker control in the California sea lion (Zalophus californianus) during a complex, dynamic sensorimotor task.
Article in Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed, 16 citations in OpenAlex.
- Head and Whisker Behaviours Observed During Foraging in Northern Elephant Seals (Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Can we study whisker movements to gain insights into the natural sensory behaviours of mammals?The Journal of physiology · 2025Review
- California sea lions employ task-specific strategies for active touch sensing.The Journal of experimental biology · 2021Article
- Somatosensory brainstem, thalamus, and cortex of the California sea lion (Zalophus californianus).The Journal of comparative neurology · 2016Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Studies in pinniped whisker use have shown that their whiskers are extremely sensitive to tactile and hydrodynamic signals. While pinnipeds position their whiskers on to objects and have some control over their whisker protractions, it has always been thought that head movements are more responsible for whisker positioning than the movement of the whiskers themselves. This study uses ball balancing, a dynamic sensorimotor skill that is often used in human and robotic coordination studies, to promote sea lion whisker movements during the task. For the first time, using tracked video footage, we show that sea lion whisker movements respond quickly (26.70 ms) and mirror the movement of the ball, much more so than the head. We show that whisker asymmetry and spread are both altered to help sense and control the ball during balancing. We believe that by designing more dynamic sensorimotor tasks we can start to characterise the active nature of this specialised sensory system in pinnipeds.
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