The Daily Feather — The Long and Short of Whiskers

On land, the longest beard on a living person was grown by Canadian Sarwan Singh. As verified on October 15, 2022, in Surrey, British Columbia by Guinness World Records, his whiskers measured 8 feet, 3 inches long. And then there’s the legend of Hans Langseth, who had Singh beat by more than a factor of two. The native Norwegian immigrated to the U.S. in 1867 where he worked as a farmer. He grew his beard as part of a contest, which he won. Later in life, Langseth traveled around as part of a circus act. And after his death in 1927, his beard, measuring 17.5 feet, was memorialized and donated to the Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution. Under the sea, seals, sea lions and walruses have the longest whiskers. Among them, the pinniped with the most striking “facial hair,” or vibrissae, is the Antarctic fur seal (arctocephalus gazella). The longest individual whisker length ever recorded of 18.8 inches from base to tip was attributed to a bull and described in British Antarctic Survey Scientific Reports in 1968.

Keeping whiskers in check is the purview of major shaving brands like Gillette and Barbasol. Coming “within a whisker” has a whole other meaning. Cambridge Dictionary explains, “if you come within a whisker of doing something, you almost do it or it almost happens to you.” After perusing yesterday’s weekly jobless claims report, this phrase was top of QI’s mind.