US researchers explain how cats lap liquids with elegance

Yahoo News ^ | 11/13/10 | AFP

[Jaded]

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US researchers on Thursday unveiled the secret of how cats lap water or milk with such elegance, a phenomenon that happens so fast it cannot be followed by human eyes.

Cats are among the many species that, unlike humans, cannot close their mouths and create suction.

With help from from high-speed video taken of a felines lapping liquid, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Princeton University found that household cats and larger felines like tigers balance gravity and inertia as they imbibe liquids.

The research will appear in the November 12 issue of the journal Science.

Scientists already knew that when cats insert their tongue into a bowl of liquid, the top surface of the tongue touches the liquid first, then the tip curves like a letter J to form a sort of ladle.

This was first observed by an MIT engineer, who filmed a cat lapping liquid in 1940.

[JoeProBono]

[norge]

Wish those cats could teach my dog...Dippermouth.

[Patrick1]

Your tax dollars at work.

[metalurgist]

How many thousands of tax dollars were spent on this meaningless study that gives us nothing in return that we care about? These so called researchers should be indited, convicted and incarcerated.

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

I just hope the NSF spent hundreds of millions verifying these claims.

[GOP Poet]

coolio

[pissant]

Federal money, no doubt. To find out what most cat owners could have told them for free.

[allmost]

Kitty pics.

[Bullish]

I’m really sure that they had nothing better to do. And now one of the age old mysteries of the world is solved.

Sheesh!

[BigCinBigD]

“Cats are among the many species that, unlike humans, cannot close their mouths and create suction.”

Obviously they didn't interview my cat Fat Boy.

[smokingfrog]

[Cowboy Bob]

bump...for the pictures!

[mylife]

That is why they yowl like that when they fool around. “sandpaper tongues”

[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

Velcro?

[bonfire]

My cat won’t drink out of her own bowl. She prefers the toilet bowel or the pond.

Elegance my behind.

[smokingfrog]

Although the work on cat drinking was done for professional pleasure - it wasn’t funded by a grant, and the only expense was high-quality video cameras - the researchers said there could be useful implications gleaned from their “fundamental” research.

[smokingfrog]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlhaGk0i4Q8

[762X51]

How cats drink is good to know and all, but shouldn’t the poindexters at MIT be working on my flying car? Where’s my flying car? I want my flying car. A cure for cancer would be okay too.

[R. Scott]

… a phenomenon that happens so fast it cannot be followed by human eyes.

Really? I’ve been watching it for years. Guess those MIT geniuses have slow eyes.