"Cuz, we have to kill stuff, Duh!"
Posted on 08/09/2015 9:31:55 PM PDT by PROCON
"Cuz, we have to kill stuff, Duh!"
Kitteh Pingy
Kitteh is a very good hunter.
Mine were the best catnip mousie destroyers ever.
Kitteh is also a good pouncer. I’m in awe of kitteh.
I just want to know why ambush predators like housecats do the butt wiggle thing when it would seem to make them more obvious and give their location away ? The feline version of buck fever, anticipation?
I’ve seen that cats - with siblings or especially the females with kittens following along on the hunt- use the pale patch on the back of their ears to signal each other or the kittens following by flicking one or the other ear like my dad used to do with his hand when we went squirrel hunting as he was directing to get a squirrel to come around to his side of the tree. I’ve, and seen it with cat siblings hunting together, too. Bobcats and tigers have this patch.
And the tail in cats, has a come hither upward curl that straightens and stiffens right at the leap point. A sideways tail thrashing seems to tell the kittens to sit down.
Mine even make little announcements or half-meows as they make their leap- especially if the target is a bird, and most of the time the target is thus alerted and takes off, the cat’s cannot seem to stop it when they are excited.
Light comes in two natural varieties, and if one is to make living as a predator in daytime illumination you need to block out the horizontal electrical component which causes haze.
It is well known that vertical slit pupils minimize aberrations caused by vertical blades of grass. Surprised the optometrist never learned about that.
Awhile ago I saw a coyote walking across the busy street from a subdivision. A huge cat hanging from it’s mouth. I just had to laugh and thought “Yeah - you THOUGHT you were the big tough predator.”
I like cats well enough - just not outside cats. I think I’m still holding a grudge from when I was a child and the neighbor’s cat wiped out the bunny nest in my backyard.
That is a pouncer with an added butt wiggle.
:)
Cats are just a race of super intelligent snakes living in bionic fur covered suits.....
That purring...that is the hum of servos and gears you are hearing.
I heard that they wiggle their butts and thrash their tails to try to get their prey to move. Cats see the prey better when they’re moving.
I’ve wondered the same thing, but I think I’ve got it.
When my cats have a bird on the other sde of the screen, they do the butt wiggle right before they pounce then freeze. The bird discounts that motion as something natural. Like the wind.
Then, when the animal strikes, they get up to a second more of movement before the animal reacts. They were already desensitized to motion from that area as ‘nothing to bother with’.
So the cats give them something to focus on then discard before the actual strike. That extra second means all the difference in the world.
lol
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