Nasal mirror

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Nose mirror of a domestic dog
A domestic cat's nose mirror

The nasal mirror ( rhinarium ), called a muffle in some large mammals , is an area formed by the mucous membrane around the nostrils of mammals and occurs mainly in macrosmats - animals with a well-developed sense of smell.

Characteristic for the nasal mirror are the lack of hair , the field of the surface and a large number of glands and tactile bodies .

In many cases, the nasal mirror is limited to the area around the nostrils, especially in the case of predators and cloven-hoofed animals . By including the upper lip but one can nose and lips mirror form, like the muzzle of the cattle and the snout of the pig. The nasal mirror can be connected to the mucous membrane of the oral vestibule through a groove, the philtrum . The temperature of the nasal mirror in the various mammal species is also different. The nose surface of dogs is significantly cooler than that of cloven-hoofed and odd-toed ungulates . A study published in Nature suggests that this enables dogs to perceive and localize weak or distant thermal radiation. Besides the vampire bat , the dog is the only species of mammal in which this is known.

Among the primates, the wet-nosed monkeys have a nasal mirror. The shortened snout of the dry-nosed monkey - this includes humans in particular - does not have a nasal mirror, so that their uninterrupted, hairy upper lip enables a high degree of differentiation of the facial muscles of the mouth.

The nose surface of the musk ox and the white-tailed porcupine is hairy.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Rolf Sauermost, Doris Outgoing (ed.) Encyclopedia of biology. In fourteen volumes . tape 9 : Lyolysis to nautococcus . Spektrum Akademischer Verlag (Elsevier), Heidelberg 2002, ISBN 3-8274-0334-0 , p. 483 .
  2. ^ A b c Alfred Kaestner : Textbook of special zoology. Volume 2: Dietrich Starck (Ed.): Vertebrates. Part 5: Dietrich Starck: Mammals. 1: General, Ordo 1-9. Fischer, Stuttgart 1995, ISBN 3-334-60453-5 , p. 121.
  3. ↑ a b c Anna Bálint, Attila Andics, Márta Gácsi, Anna Gábor, Kálmán Czeibert: Dogs can sense weak thermal radiation . In: Scientific Reports . tape 10 , no. 1 , February 28, 2020, ISSN  2045-2322 , p. 1–9 , doi : 10.1038 / s41598-020-60439-y ( nature.com [accessed March 2, 2020]).
  4. ↑ DER SPIEGEL: Dogs can smell warmth - DER SPIEGEL - Science. Retrieved March 2, 2020 .

Web links

Wiktionary: nasal mirror  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations