Those “beauty marks” are mounds of nerves that help relay information collected by the whiskers to the brain, Or as Carol Foil, ACVD, a veterinary dermatologist consultant with the Veterinary Information Network in Davis, Calif., put it: “The little beauty marks are mounds of nerves and other connections that make the whiskers function as tactile (feeling) hairs.”
A more technical name for dog whiskers is vibrissae, and they are so sensitive that they can even detect air movement. They allow a dog to know exactly where his face is in the environment, a useful trait when digging holes or pursuing prey or even just getting around the house. One of the reasons blind dogs do so well at home is because they depend on their noses and their whiskers to navigate more than their eyes.