MEE! I just learned something about my fellow kitties. We really know how to maximize physics when we drink water.
From the Washington Post
While a dog curls its tongue like a ladle to collect the water and then pull up what it can, a cat curves its tongue under and slightly back, leaving the top surface of the tip of the tongue to lightly touch the liquid. The cat then raises its tongue rapidly, creating an upward mini-stream of water. The cat snaps its mouth shut and the water is captured before the countervailing force of gravity pulls it down.
An average house cat, the team found, can make four of these mini-streams per second.
Do you see? Kitties are fairly conservative when it comes to physics. LOL And you never knew.
I should add that the study that was done wasn’t funded by grants or such. In fact, the only real expense was a couple of high-speed video cameras. The research was done mostly for professional pleasure. It was inspired by a cat belonging to one of the researchers. He wondered how Cutta Cutta (Australian Aboriginal for “Stars stars”) managed to drink.
He inspired some fellow scientists and they went off to film other cats in the zoos. They found that they all use the same method, though big cats lap a bit slower.
From the same article:
In the beginning of the project, we weren’t fully confident that fluid mechanics played a role in cats’ drinking,” said Jung, whose research focuses on soft bodies, such as fish, and the fluids surrounding them. “But as the project went on, we were surprised and amused by the beauty of the fluid mechanics involved in this system.
I find it nice that people are taking the time to study us. Dogs and kitties should be studied much more, but this is a good start.
