How Do Cats Drink… Maybe Not How You Think…
Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.
Have you ever watched a cat drink and wondered how they did it? I bet you’d say “Just like a dog right?”… NOT even close… read on…
The way that a cat drinks is surprisingly complicated, and even scientists got it wrong for a long time. How cats drink and how we thought they drank are different.
Studies done in the 1940s at MIT suggested that cats scooped up the water using the back of their tongue… WRONG AGAIN… So much for MIT and 1940′s physics huh!
Using modern digital high resolution videography we can discover some really amazing stuff. Scientists used this technology to check out the physics of drinking cats… and they were really astonished at what they found.
The way that cats drink is surprisingly different than what they thought… and surprisingly inefficient. This explains why many healthy cats drink and drink and drink.
On top of that, many cats don’t like drinking from still water that has been sitting. The water in your cat’s dish can easily become fouled or “taste funny” by the time you get home from work.
Now this is seriously important information because most cats just plain don’t drink enough water in general. And that in turn contributes to a ton of cat common cat maladies that often shorten their lives drastically! Who would have thought that it COULD be that simple!
Look what they eat and drink can shorten an indoor cat's life by more than 70%. That's right... It used to be said that a 6 year old cat was "old and headed downhill"... and "10 years old was ready to go to that big cat farm in the sky"...
Well I got news for you. Later studies and my own 50 years of experience with cats say that most well cared for indoor cats can typically live happy and healthy lives "upwards of 16 years". My last 2 guys passed at 20 & 21 years from kidney failure! In fact scientists suggest that if cared for properly, our indoor domestic cats are actually "built" to live up to 30 years or so!!
Back to drinking:
Every time you watch your cat drink, you’re watching an incredible display of physics. Cats are known for being beautiful and graceful, but even their drinking is a nearly miraculous balance of forces so compelling that scientists have studied exactly how the process works.
Researchers have analyzed how cats drink for years. Scientists at MIT in the 1940s filmed a cat drinking milk and studied the footage for years.
From this video, it was thought that cats extend their tongues straight down in the bowl and curl the tip of their tongue backwards. The bit of tongue that touches the milk first is the top of the tongue.
The high-speed digital camera gave us new insight, and a new way to look at cats. It turns out that cats don’t dip their tongues in their water or milk like dogs. Dogs drink using their tongue more like a ladle. Cats have a totally different mechanism – one that really seems quiet inefficient.
The high-speed footage showed that the only part of a cat's tongue that touches the water is the top. , Denise Brehm, a representative from MIT's department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, described the process like this: "The smooth tip of the tongue barely touches the surface of the liquid before the cat draws its tongue back up. As it does so, a column of liquid forms between the moving tongue and the liquid's surface. The cat then closes its mouth, pinching off the top of the column for a nice drink, while keeping its chin dry."
The study continues, explaining how the seemingly inefficient process is really quite effective. “When the cat’s tongue touches the liquid surface, some of the liquid sticks to it through liquid adhesion, much as water adheres to a human palm when it touches the surface of a pool.
But the cat draws its tongue back up so rapidly that for a fraction of a second, inertia – the tendency of the moving liquid to continue following the tongue – overcomes gravity, which is pulling the liquid back down toward the bowl.
The cat instinctively knows just when this delicate balance will change, and it closes its mouth in the instant before gravity overtakes inertia.
If the cat hesitated, the column would break, the liquid would fall back into the bowl, and the tongue would come up empty.”
Hey look as I mentioned… after sharing a half of a century with cats, I can truthfully say that say that there is way more to this species than we realize.
The #1 chosen companion of humans to-date… intelligence level a step below and orangutan, one of the very few and oldest domesticated “predators”, the most unique musculature, skeletal structure, and weaponry of all species, and we still have no idea what is behind the “stare of the cat”…
Many folks and “big dogs” are petrified of an angry cat… which is a good thing! Because no matter how small “they” are, they’ve got the intelligence, the flexibility, the speed, and the weaponry to do some serious “hurt”. They’re still predators…
In fact “our fear” of them is so great that in many states it is illegal to house a feline species over 30 lbs. Imagine going to a neighbor’s house a facing a cat as big as a medium sized dog… (uh, bring a change of underware).
Mark my words, one day we’ll find that behind those eyes are forces and secrets as unique and incredible as the creature itself!
Baltimore Dave
PS.: Go to /almostasecret.php?id=dusky … STOP WAITING for the RIGHT OPPORTUNITY… OPEN THE LINK… AND YOU’RE LOOKING AT IT!