Official News page 7

REAL LIFE NEWS: CAT LAP MYSTERY SOLVED

by Hazed

Cats lap up liquid so very elegantly, don't they? Not like dogs, those messy creatures who splash droplets all over the place. But the mechanism they use has been a mystery - until now.

A team of researchers has used high-speed cameras and a pet cat to find out. They discovered that cats use their tongues to delicately draw up water without breaking the surface of the liquid. Dogs, on the other hand, use their tongues to scoop up water, like a fleshy spoon, hence the splashiness.

They think cats may have adopted this more complex, neat approach because it makes it a lot less likely they will get splashed with water as they drink.

The research was done by Dr Roman Stocker, a biophysicist from MIT. He was inspired to investigate the physics of cat laps after watching his cat Cutta Cutta as it drank. "I realized there was an interesting biomechanics problem hidden behind that very simple action," he said. "The project then snowballed from there."

Dr Stocker roped in researchers from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and Princeton University to help study the phenomenon. They trained a high-speed camera on his cat then examined the footage. They discovered that the tip of the cat's tongue curls backwards, not forwards, as it darts down towards its bowl. It then lightly touches the surface of the liquid, not penetrating it.

"The fluid comes in contact with the tongue and sticks to it, then the action of the tongue being drawn upwards very rapidly creates a liquid column," explained Dr Stocker. "Then, by closing its jaw, the cat captures part of that liquid."

The researchers wanted to look at this mechanism in more detail, so they created a robotic cat tongue. (Pause for a moment to ponder this... a robotic cat tongue. Awesome!)

So how does this compare to other animals? They studied zoo animals and watched YouTube footage and discovered that big cats such as tigers, leopards and cheetahs also use the same mechanism.

Fed2 Star index Previous issues Fed 2 home page