> While dogs slowed down and hesitated before they attempted to use an uncomfortably small opening, in the case of cats, we did not detect this change in their behavior before their attempt to go through even the narrowest openings. However, remarkably, cats showed hesitation both before they attempted to penetrate the shortest openings, and while they moved through it.
I just skimmed, but I didn’t see any mention whiskers. It’s seems to me that cats can make highly precise measurements of width just by sticking their heads in a space, but height judgments requires additional consideration.
> Cats are also aided by their large and sensitive vibrissae, which are positioned on such locations of their head that the cat can detect nearby obstacles in closer encounters. Vibrissal sensation can compensate for the somewhat weaker vision in cats from closer distances or in poorly illuminated environments. Therefore, it is possible that cats approached the narrow openings in our experiment without differential hesitation, and they could use their vibrissae to assess the suitability of the apertures before penetrating them.
If you have ever put a cone on a cat (which lasts about five minutes), you see they get crazy. They hug the walls.
Their whiskers are a major factor in their perception.
I think they can also dislocate their spine.
My cat likes to sit in what we call his "Buddha" position, with his back bent about 90 degrees, and his paws in front. This seems to be a common position. He'll sit like that for an hour.
I think the cones must also screw up their aural spatial sensation (changing their perception of sound from fairly omni-directional, to seeming like all the sounds are coming from in front of the cone).
I think all cats are weird in their own way. Our cat often sunbathed in the middle of parking space across the road. We occasionally had to go out to fetch him because he would refuse to move when someone started to drive into the space.
I've seen a few people use a soft inflatable or plush collar that's more flat, and doesn't go up around the face, instead of an actual cone. That way the cat's the whiskers aren't disturbed while still preventing the cat from worsening wounds by licking. At least some cats seem to be a lot more tolerant of that style.
Before I had cats, I used to think of them in terms of other animals. What I mean is that a dog or a horse is very defined by its skeletal structure. They are like popsicle stick armatures with some flesh thrown on.
Now I think of cats more like amorphous blobs with some hard bits stuck on. I think anyone who owns a cat will know what I mean by this.
Yeah, nope. If I get like that, I'm never coming back. Probably have to bury me in that pose.
Is this really just a matter of stretching? I read the article and he sums it down to he needs to stretch every day (he said himself thst his diet doesn't matter too much) He was also in the circus since 4, but this doesn't seems like something I could do in a lifetime of practice.
You probably couldn't. There are lots of forms of hyper mobility, and extreme versions come with health risks. With practice and training you can probably do a lot more than you imagine, but for most of us the whole "fold yourself in half backwards" thing is beyond the limits of our spine, and it's for the best.
For what it's worth, their hips and shoulders are actually limited in range of motion compared to humans, due to the very high muscle attachment points that are also what make them so amazingly strong and explosive for their small size. But an extremely flexible spine combined with the ability to dislocate key joints means they can still fit into very small, narrow spaces, presumably an adaptation allowing them to hunt small rodents that burrow and hide out in underground dens. Which I assume is why they have the instinct to immediately jump into and check out any box or cabinet or other enclosed space you open. You never know if there might be some voles in there.
They actually prefer to jump in a box because to them, it's a safe space to hide and watch. Cats look for spaces like that because their wild ancestors (and feral cats now) are small enough that they are both predators and prey.
Yup. Same reason why they like to climb to high places. They can feel safe and survey the surroundings. Additionally, cats will hide in confined spaces when ill or in pain; a sudden desire to hide for prolonged periods is a sign that it needs to see a vet.
I think a lot of oddities we attribute to cats can be explained by the fact that they are both predator and prey. No other animal we spend a lot of time with occupies such a schizophrenic position in the food chain.
I've noticed free-range chickens have some characteristics that derive from a similar position; chickens are not "predators" but they will happily predate if the opportunity arises, and they are also prey. Being birds and natural flock animals, it manifests differently, and there's some interesting behaviors I've noticed.
"Chicken" as a synonym for "total, utter coward" is slander. Yes, running is their first play, but they do not just roll over and die like a sheep or a rabbit; if running isn't working they can and do fight back for all they are worth. And they don't have to be "backed into a corner" and only fight if it's the absolute last option, it just has to be as I phrased it: "running isn't working".
We owned a small chicken that roamed in our garden, but not long after we got that chicken our neighbors got a cat.
We were worried their cat would attack our chicken at some point, until one day we saw their cat running for its life while a small chicken chases after it trying to keep up with the agile predator using its tiny chicken legs.
From that day forward the neighbor's cat understood its place in the pecking order.
A stray cat I adopted as we could not find his owner was named "Beanbag" for exactly this quality.
After a few days of recovery and starting to get comfortable, he started to snooze and literally poured off the couch, like a bag of beans... and he loved to stretch in my lap while I coded, putting up with all the typing & mousing... Truly liquid, indeed! Wonderful little guy, I still miss him.
> If the opportunity was given to them, dogs opted for a detour in the case of uncomfortably small apertures
Except in the case of one very sweet but not exactly brilliant large dog I know that legitimately believes his entire body is just the tip of his nose that he can see. I’ve seen him walk straight through a 2” hole in a screen door, and he will repeatedly try to sit on e.g. a chair armrest and not understand why it doesn’t work.
Black cats are the best. She is one of two sisters (oldest cats at 9 at this point). 17 pounds of chunk loving. Annoying as all get out, but will literally roll around on the arm of the couch and “accidentally” drop into my lap.
My wife and I go between two locations, today will be the first time 4 of the cats meet the murder noodle.
When a cat can go between two openings that are too small for the cat to pass through and the cat isn't being observed is what's interesting though and nobody has yet explained that.
Interesting because I have recently been trying to catch a stray cat for a capture-release process and the cat will not walk into a typical trap-door type wire mesh trap. Watching him on video the roof of the trap seems to freak him out. It seems a better trap would have a narrow gap with high door that lets them confidently walk into the trap and trigger would just block the slot perhaps with some sort of sliding door blocking the exit.
The overhead view of figure 3 in particular is noteworthy to me. The 3 human subjects are represented as abstract ovals, and the cat drawn as a cat who is staring up as if to look through the fourth ceiling at the reader.
The reader becomes, in a sense, a greeble.
This paper would have been a fun project for a scientific illustrator.
For reference, in the cat realm a greeble is what cats are looking at when they stare up at the ceiling or wall and there is nothing there. At least that you can see.
So instead of the real cat staring at the imaginary greeble, we the reader are the real greeble staring at the imaginary cat. Who is staring back because it can see us.
I watched as a cat dove through a narrow opening
(stair baulsters)only to wedge its aft end,stop dead,do a totaly ignoble face plant,and then sort of oooze through to land gracelessly.
So in this case there was no hesitation,and cats
regularly missjudge and get run over by cars,so at best the data is just that...data.
Anecdotally my cat is always very cautious before going through cat flags, which are not particularly narrow but very short, but never hesitate to run into narrow but deep stuff...
He's taken down at least a dozen videos criticizing him by using his position as a youtuber with a million+ subscribers. Originally it was just videos referencing his "maldavius figtree" fursona, but now it's anything that portrays him in a negative way.
Catchy headline, but also in a fluid in a dynamical sense - cats "flow" into spaces when exploring by trial-and-error testing openings with their body size, but they are also only "almost" liquid in that for especially narrow openings they are reluctant to poke their heads in, presumably because they might get stuck.
The contrast with dogs in the introduction is instructive: dogs tend to hunt over open fields rather than chasing prey into narrow dens, so it makes sense they would tend to make conservative eyeball judgments about whether they can fit into certain spaces. But cats will try to corner their prey in a tunnel/etc, so they have good reason to rely more on touch and experimentation ("ecologically-valid strategy").
I agree. I think it's a bit of nod into the playfulness most associate with cats. I don't mind though, cats are one subject I'm okay with some leeway in the rigorousness of the article title.
> While dogs slowed down and hesitated before they attempted to use an uncomfortably small opening, in the case of cats, we did not detect this change in their behavior before their attempt to go through even the narrowest openings. However, remarkably, cats showed hesitation both before they attempted to penetrate the shortest openings, and while they moved through it.
I just skimmed, but I didn’t see any mention whiskers. It’s seems to me that cats can make highly precise measurements of width just by sticking their heads in a space, but height judgments requires additional consideration.
> Cats are also aided by their large and sensitive vibrissae, which are positioned on such locations of their head that the cat can detect nearby obstacles in closer encounters. Vibrissal sensation can compensate for the somewhat weaker vision in cats from closer distances or in poorly illuminated environments. Therefore, it is possible that cats approached the narrow openings in our experiment without differential hesitation, and they could use their vibrissae to assess the suitability of the apertures before penetrating them.
Oh thank you! I’m just a lowly cat owner and did not know what vibrissae are.
If you have ever put a cone on a cat (which lasts about five minutes), you see they get crazy. They hug the walls.
Their whiskers are a major factor in their perception.
I think they can also dislocate their spine.
My cat likes to sit in what we call his "Buddha" position, with his back bent about 90 degrees, and his paws in front. This seems to be a common position. He'll sit like that for an hour.
I think the cones must also screw up their aural spatial sensation (changing their perception of sound from fairly omni-directional, to seeming like all the sounds are coming from in front of the cone).
My cats are weird and loved their cones after they got neutered. One would stick his head back in the cone after I took it off.
I think all cats are weird in their own way. Our cat often sunbathed in the middle of parking space across the road. We occasionally had to go out to fetch him because he would refuse to move when someone started to drive into the space.
I have a ginger tomboy who does exactly this. He loves just rolling around in the fine layer of dirt while keeping an eye out for birds or frogs
Orange cats sharing their one brain cell.
I've seen a few people use a soft inflatable or plush collar that's more flat, and doesn't go up around the face, instead of an actual cone. That way the cat's the whiskers aren't disturbed while still preventing the cat from worsening wounds by licking. At least some cats seem to be a lot more tolerant of that style.
I tried this but cats, being (almost) liquid, can very easily wrap around the soft collars and reach pretty much any part of their body.
From skimming the HN comments:
> Wiskers are mentioned, but using the scientific name - vibrissae
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41870897
Calvin vindicated
https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/04/20
I love C&H and am blown away there was something so applicable. Felt like an XKCD moment!
C&H moments are the original XKCD moments!
Bill Watterson was absolutely brilliant at depicting the weird positions that cats will lie in.
Missing a cite to some pioneering work on this in the 30s by A.S.J. Tessimond [1]
Cats no less liquid than their shadows
Offer no angles to the wind.
They slip, diminished, neat through loopholes
Less than themselves; will not be pinned
[1]https://www.blueridgejournal.com/poems/asjt-cats.htm
Not to mention Fardin, 2014.
Before I had cats, I used to think of them in terms of other animals. What I mean is that a dog or a horse is very defined by its skeletal structure. They are like popsicle stick armatures with some flesh thrown on.
Now I think of cats more like amorphous blobs with some hard bits stuck on. I think anyone who owns a cat will know what I mean by this.
My cat often lays down twisted 180 degrees or more. Just doing whatever they want, defying laws of nature.
Well, dogs also do this—I present to you my majestically twisted creature: https://imgur.com/a/5WcYzSw
I have no clue how that is even possible.
I'm also stupefied by a human doing it. https://imgur.com/a/W7bcLZo
Taken from: https://www.gq.com/story/aleksei-goloborodko-real-life-diet
Yeah, nope. If I get like that, I'm never coming back. Probably have to bury me in that pose.
Is this really just a matter of stretching? I read the article and he sums it down to he needs to stretch every day (he said himself thst his diet doesn't matter too much) He was also in the circus since 4, but this doesn't seems like something I could do in a lifetime of practice.
You probably couldn't. There are lots of forms of hyper mobility, and extreme versions come with health risks. With practice and training you can probably do a lot more than you imagine, but for most of us the whole "fold yourself in half backwards" thing is beyond the limits of our spine, and it's for the best.
Brought memories of one of my cats (now silent meow) who also added the Italian equivalent of a middle finger.
https://imgur.com/a/GFukfFP
Your dog is the inverse of the Firefox.
majestic indeed!
I almost sprayed all my tea to my monitor and keyboard.
Wish both of you a happy and derpy life together.
Clearly your dog has been possessed by a demon.
Dog Yoga
Doga.
When I pick up my cat and he's relaxed, it feels like I'm picking up a tube sock full of pudding.
Horse is practically all air. That's their secret. They are blimps with legs.
For what it's worth, their hips and shoulders are actually limited in range of motion compared to humans, due to the very high muscle attachment points that are also what make them so amazingly strong and explosive for their small size. But an extremely flexible spine combined with the ability to dislocate key joints means they can still fit into very small, narrow spaces, presumably an adaptation allowing them to hunt small rodents that burrow and hide out in underground dens. Which I assume is why they have the instinct to immediately jump into and check out any box or cabinet or other enclosed space you open. You never know if there might be some voles in there.
They actually prefer to jump in a box because to them, it's a safe space to hide and watch. Cats look for spaces like that because their wild ancestors (and feral cats now) are small enough that they are both predators and prey.
Yup. Same reason why they like to climb to high places. They can feel safe and survey the surroundings. Additionally, cats will hide in confined spaces when ill or in pain; a sudden desire to hide for prolonged periods is a sign that it needs to see a vet.
I think a lot of oddities we attribute to cats can be explained by the fact that they are both predator and prey. No other animal we spend a lot of time with occupies such a schizophrenic position in the food chain.
I've noticed free-range chickens have some characteristics that derive from a similar position; chickens are not "predators" but they will happily predate if the opportunity arises, and they are also prey. Being birds and natural flock animals, it manifests differently, and there's some interesting behaviors I've noticed.
"Chicken" as a synonym for "total, utter coward" is slander. Yes, running is their first play, but they do not just roll over and die like a sheep or a rabbit; if running isn't working they can and do fight back for all they are worth. And they don't have to be "backed into a corner" and only fight if it's the absolute last option, it just has to be as I phrased it: "running isn't working".
We owned a small chicken that roamed in our garden, but not long after we got that chicken our neighbors got a cat.
We were worried their cat would attack our chicken at some point, until one day we saw their cat running for its life while a small chicken chases after it trying to keep up with the agile predator using its tiny chicken legs.
From that day forward the neighbor's cat understood its place in the pecking order.
A rooster in full on attack mode can be pretty scary.
> actually
I spit my coffee out
> You never know if there might be some voles in there
I like to think I always know if there might be some voles in my boxes and cabinets.
That's just what the voles want you to think.
A stray cat I adopted as we could not find his owner was named "Beanbag" for exactly this quality.
After a few days of recovery and starting to get comfortable, he started to snooze and literally poured off the couch, like a bag of beans... and he loved to stretch in my lap while I coded, putting up with all the typing & mousing... Truly liquid, indeed! Wonderful little guy, I still miss him.
I, for one, know, understand and welcome our almost liquid feline overlords.
Purring bags of mostly water.
These are old news for those of us that grew bonsai kittens in the late 90s.
https://web.archive.org/web/20050203111131/http://bonsaikitt...
Obviously it was a hoax, probably one of the first ones reaching the first generation of internet users. But lots of people fell for it.
> If the opportunity was given to them, dogs opted for a detour in the case of uncomfortably small apertures
Except in the case of one very sweet but not exactly brilliant large dog I know that legitimately believes his entire body is just the tip of his nose that he can see. I’ve seen him walk straight through a 2” hole in a screen door, and he will repeatedly try to sit on e.g. a chair armrest and not understand why it doesn’t work.
Oh but that is old news!
"On the Rheology of Cats":
https://www.drgoulu.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Rheology-...
Now that is what a dry academic paper about cats is supposed to look like. Cat pictures on every page.
Having 7 cats, they are all different. My oldest mail holds himself rigid. The youngest male - still a kitten - is a noodle of murder and destruction.
Nice Description. A black noodle just joined our other 5 cats.
Black cats are the best. She is one of two sisters (oldest cats at 9 at this point). 17 pounds of chunk loving. Annoying as all get out, but will literally roll around on the arm of the couch and “accidentally” drop into my lap.
My wife and I go between two locations, today will be the first time 4 of the cats meet the murder noodle.
When a cat can go between two openings that are too small for the cat to pass through and the cat isn't being observed is what's interesting though and nobody has yet explained that.
Interesting because I have recently been trying to catch a stray cat for a capture-release process and the cat will not walk into a typical trap-door type wire mesh trap. Watching him on video the roof of the trap seems to freak him out. It seems a better trap would have a narrow gap with high door that lets them confidently walk into the trap and trigger would just block the slot perhaps with some sort of sliding door blocking the exit.
The overhead view of figure 3 in particular is noteworthy to me. The 3 human subjects are represented as abstract ovals, and the cat drawn as a cat who is staring up as if to look through the fourth ceiling at the reader.
The reader becomes, in a sense, a greeble.
This paper would have been a fun project for a scientific illustrator.
For reference, in the cat realm a greeble is what cats are looking at when they stare up at the ceiling or wall and there is nothing there. At least that you can see.
So instead of the real cat staring at the imaginary greeble, we the reader are the real greeble staring at the imaginary cat. Who is staring back because it can see us.
There's no mention of their whiskers, I was under the impression that this is what they use to become aware of their body size in tight spaces.
Wiskers are mentioned, but using the scientific name - vibrissae
I watched as a cat dove through a narrow opening (stair baulsters)only to wedge its aft end,stop dead,do a totaly ignoble face plant,and then sort of oooze through to land gracelessly. So in this case there was no hesitation,and cats regularly missjudge and get run over by cars,so at best the data is just that...data.
This seems relevant: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lastquarte...
This science paper could have been a cat meme video. Never thought I would be saying that and meaning it literally.
I mean I’ve seen the cat challenge meme video done a dozen times.
https://youtu.be/O7PkYkXdKwc?si=-8BTPVvAK19WVEF
This is like “hey what if this cat video was a research paper”
Obligatory Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/catsareliquid/.
This sounds like something Karl Pilkington would come up with.
We need a documentary.
I wonder if the same experiment could be done with big cats - Would an opening that touches the mane of a lion have the same results?
The cat will just get annoyed - it's a shaggy tangly thing that always gets in the way.
Speaking from personal experience >:3
See also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z30eLocTnU
Anecdotally my cat is always very cautious before going through cat flags, which are not particularly narrow but very short, but never hesitate to run into narrow but deep stuff...
This is why they flow out of our grasp.
FYI, the cats are not literally almost liquid in body composition.
"Almost" is a bit vague and probably too strong, but they are mostly water, just like other mammals.
Therefore they are more properly classified as soups.
Noted ontologist Pirate Software would argue that cats are a Wellington, not a soup.
https://youtube.com/shorts/MnAegCmJ7Xk
I can't refute his logic.
I'm surprised to see this guy show up in a positive light after his false flagging campaign.
What false flagging campaign are you referring to? I am not familiar.
He's taken down at least a dozen videos criticizing him by using his position as a youtuber with a million+ subscribers. Originally it was just videos referencing his "maldavius figtree" fursona, but now it's anything that portrays him in a negative way.
Save for their skeletons and other dry structures like hair and shells, animals are in fact gels.
Maybe they're more broth-like? Also the paper at https://www.drgoulu.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Rheology-... seems to indicate that they are "active rheological materials" and therefore probably non-Newtonian.
That's a lot of ambiguity for a scientific paper. Even if it's true (Cats are about 60-70% water), that's not the point of the title.
I suspect its because it makes for a catchy headline.
Catchy headline, but also in a fluid in a dynamical sense - cats "flow" into spaces when exploring by trial-and-error testing openings with their body size, but they are also only "almost" liquid in that for especially narrow openings they are reluctant to poke their heads in, presumably because they might get stuck.
The contrast with dogs in the introduction is instructive: dogs tend to hunt over open fields rather than chasing prey into narrow dens, so it makes sense they would tend to make conservative eyeball judgments about whether they can fit into certain spaces. But cats will try to corner their prey in a tunnel/etc, so they have good reason to rely more on touch and experimentation ("ecologically-valid strategy").
I agree. I think it's a bit of nod into the playfulness most associate with cats. I don't mind though, cats are one subject I'm okay with some leeway in the rigorousness of the article title.
Here's the podcast: https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/52350e74-f4b0-42d9-a1...