I don't know if you have carefully observed cats such as tigers, in addition to their very beautiful appearance, they also have a significant feature, that is, most cats have a touch of white hair behind their ears, which looks quite conspicuous.
Generally speaking, solitary cats mostly take ambushes to catch prey, so for them concealment is very important, in reality most cats have also developed excellent camouflage colors, such as leopard stripes, tiger stripes, cloud-like patterns of clouded leopards and so on.
tiger
But the white hair behind the ear is very conspicuous, isn't this contrary to common sense? In fact, most animals hunt head-on to the prey, even if the back of the ear is very conspicuous, it does not have much impact on them hiding themselves in front of the prey, and this "white" is very important for their daily life, and it can even be said that if the tiger lacks this feature, the development of the entire population will be greatly affected. So what is the role of these white hairs behind the ears of cats?
Tigers have white hairs behind their ears
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > cats are mostly nocturnal</h1>
Before we understand what this feature does, let's take a look at the habits of cats. With the exception of lions, the other cats live alone, and most are nocturnal, so why do they exhibit such habits? In fact, it has to do with their living environment.
The so-called "one side of the water and soil to nurture the other", for wild animals is no exception, even the same species, living in different environments, the behavior is also very different, such as gray wolves, in siberia, North America in the open area, they are mostly in large groups, and in the deciduous forests in Europe, the number of lone wolves even exceeds the number of socials.
wolf
It is obvious that the environment can affect the behavior of animals, such as the same leopard, which lives in the African savanna, and the hunting period is day and night, while the leopard living in the dense forests of Malaysia is mostly hunted during the day.
Because in the African savannah, ungulates are very rich in both number and species, whether day or night there are a large number of animal activities, for leopards, day and night can be predestined; and in the dense forests of Malaysia, there are fewer ungulates and species, most of them operate during the day, so the leopards here are also hunting during the day.
African leopards prey on warthogs
Cats are very intelligent predators, they can change their habits according to the environment, such as lions living in the Galenetti steppe, because of the abundant number of ungulates such as wildebeests here, so the lions living here will not touch elephants, giraffes and other super large animals that are difficult to take down, nor can they look at the "thorny roses" of porcupines.
Lions living in arid areas of Africa, due to lack of food, have to adjust their feeding habits, and are even willing to risk preying on porcupines.
Lion and porcupine
Lions living in Asia, before the indigenous Marhari tribe moved out of the Gil Forest Reserve, their food composition accounted for a large proportion of livestock, and since the Malhari tribe moved out of the reserve, the number of wild ungulates has increased dramatically, and the mainstream of the Food Composition of Asiatic Lion has become wild ungulates, and the proportion of livestock has dropped from 75% to 25%.
Having said all that, it's a whole story: the environment can influence animal behavior in many ways, and most cats are nocturnal because their prey is mostly nocturnal.
Asiatic lion
The white hair behind the ear is the carrier of information transmission
We all know that most animal groups need to exchange information between each other, and the way of information exchange is nothing more than that: behavioral actions, visual images, chemicals, electrical signals and sounds, especially visual images, sounds, which we are most familiar with, such as the opening screen of peacocks and the barking of spotted hyenas, which are all ways of information transmission.
The white hairs behind the tiger's ears are more conspicuous at night, which is very important for their information exchange, and these white hairs are the carriers of information transmission to be precise. When the tigress walks at night with her cubs, if it finds danger ahead, it will put its ears up, and the baby tigers will immediately find this "white" and become vigilant.
In addition, when the tiger lurks, if there is an animal approaching behind, these conspicuous white hairs, like two eyes, can also play a warning role, indicating: There are people here!
Tigress and cubs
In the past, due to the lack of cognitive level, it was generally believed that nocturnal animals used sound and chemical signals for information exchange at night, but with the deepening of research, more and more examples showed that visual signals played a considerable role in the information exchange of nocturnal animals.
For cats such as tigers, the white hair behind the ear is undoubtedly one of the best information transmission carriers at night, and if this feature is missing, it will undoubtedly become a very fatal defect, which has a very large impact on the entire population.
Visual manifestations of melanized individuals and normal individuals at night
A 2019 report in PLOS ONE magazine stated that melanized cats may be beneficial to their hunting at night, but they can also hinder communication between individuals and even bring about evolutionary dilemmas.
There are many leopard black mutants in the dense forests of Malaysia, even reaching an 11% probability, and looking at the African savanna, the black panther is a very rare animal, and even for decades people have discovered a few cases, why there are such differences, which is related to the environment in which they are located.
Black Panthers of Africa
As mentioned earlier, leopards in the dense forests of Malaysia mostly hunt during the day, so whether it is a blackened individual or an ordinary individual, the exchange of information between the populations will not be affected, and even under the cover of the dense forest, the blackened individuals still have certain advantages.
The leopards on the African savannah hunt day and night, and at night, due to the lack of corresponding visual signal transmission carriers, hinder the exchange of information between blackened individuals and individuals, which has a great impact on a series of survival activities of their "finding objects", then the trait of natural black mutation is not easy to retain in these places.
Normal leopard
The white hair behind the ears of felines is very conspicuous, which is a very effective carrier of their information exchange, there are many cats with such traits, in addition to tigers, there are fishing cats, lynx, small spotted tiger cats, leopards, etc., accounting for the vast majority of 40 species of cats.
This feature plays a big role in their daily lives, especially when the mother beast carries the cub, can transmit a "dangerous" signal to the cub through this feature, so that the survival rate of the cub is improved, which is good for the continuation of the population.
lynx
what about animals < h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > lack this feature? </h1>
Since this "white" behind the ears of cats has such a big effect, but in reality we can also observe that some cats do not have this feature, so how do they resolve the harm caused by the lack of this feature?
In reality, there are such animals, such as slender-waisted cats, they are "pure color" felines, and black individuals are more than reddish-brown individuals, reaching about 80%, indicating that even if they do not have the characteristic of "white hair behind the ears", the communication between their populations will not be affected, so how do thin-waisted cats do?
Black thin-waisted cat
It turns out that the slender-waisted cats living in the Americas are mainly engaged in daytime life, they are diurnal, and the North American forests are not dense rainforests, during the day, the visibility of the leaf layer, the shrub layer, and the surface layer of the ground is very large, so even if it is a black individual, there is no conspicuous white hair, they can still complete the communication between individuals and individuals, so even if the whole body is completely black, there is no obvious white hair behind the ears, and there is not much impact on the life of the slender-waisted cat, then they naturally do not need this trait.
Lionesses and cubs
Lions also have white hairs behind their ears, but they are inconspicuous, and if they don't look closely, they are not even easy to find, so how do they complete the exchange of information? It turns out that lions have a good substitute, that is, the tufts of hair at the tip of their tails.
The lion's tail is different from other cats, is a clustered tail, when the lioness with cubs walking in the bushes or higher weeds, its tail is a good guide, if found that there is danger ahead, it can also warn the cubs behind by swinging, raising the tail, can also play a role in transmitting information.
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