The Tiger in Your Cat
When she's curled on your lap purring, your cat seems like the most gentle of domestic pets. But the truth is, there's a "tiger" lurking inside that cuddly ball of fur. Apart from their size, our pet felines aren't very far removed physiologically or temperamentally from their big, powerful cousins of the wild. Here are some physical and behavioral similarities that our pet cats share with their larger relatives: * Tigers and cats both clean themselves with their tongues, which have a rough, abrasive texture due to hundreds of papillae on the surface. The tiger's tongue -- a large-scale version of your cat's -- is so coarse that it can lick paint off a wall. * The claws of both big and small cats are retractable, normally kept inside protective sheaths in the toe, and brought out when the animal gets excited, feels threatened or wants to grab onto an object like prey. (The cheetah is the only member of the feline family, that doesn’t have retractable claws.) This retractability allows feline claws to remain much sharper and more pointed than a dog's toenails, since they don't get blunted from constant friction as the animal walks. * Both tigers and cats have 30 permanent teeth -- 12 fewer than a dog has -- including four canine teeth, 14 molars and pre-molars, and 12 incisors. Sixteen of these teeth are on the feline's upper jaw, and 14 on the lower jaw. * Shine a light on any cat or tiger's eyes at night, and they will turn a luminous green. This is due to a layer of flattened nerve fibers behind the eye, called the tapeturm lucidum, which is made up of reflective cells that use the bright color to magnify light -- a big reason why both tigers and cats are able to see so well at night. * When confronted with certain scents, tigers and cats will manifest a "Flehmen response," wrinkling their nose and hanging out their tongue in what looks like a giant smile. What the animal is actually doing is recording the scent by breathing it into a sensory receptor called the Jacobson organ at the back of the mouth. * Despite their many similarities to tigers, our pet cats have a couple of inexplicable traits that make them unique in the feline world -- their ability to purr, and their reaction to catnip -- neither of which is shared by their big cousins in the wild.   |