The Weird Thing About Cat Legs

http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/02/the-weird-thing-about-cat-legs/459369/?single_page=true

by Amorymeltzer • 10 years ago

113 28 10 years ago

theatlantic.com

tshadwell2• 10 years ago

The "weird thing" being: 'A Cat's posture should change as it gets older, but it doesn't'

ams61102• 10 years ago

s/older/larger/

raldi• 10 years ago

Thank you; I hate when the answer to a clickbait title is buried deep in an article.

tshadwell2• 10 years ago

Correction (thanks ams6110):

The "weird thing" being: 'The posture of larger cats should be different to smaller cats, but it isn't'.

“It's famously said that a lion is just a scaled-up house cat,” says Anjali Goswami from University College London, who works with Hutchinson. “That's very weird.”

ypeterholmes• 10 years ago

Still didn't quite capture it:

"When animals get bigger, their posture changes. Their legs tend to straighten, becoming stiffer and more pillar-like to better support their weight. Not so with cats. When a lion strides across the savannah, it has essentially the same posture as the domesticated tabby that slinks over your lap. Lions, tigers, and leopards—oh my—are, as Hutchinson writes, the only large, crouching mammals."

However I agree this article could have been a tweet.

krylon• 10 years ago

We are, I realize, trying to out-stealth a cat. It's going about as well as you'd expect.

I don't have time read the full article right now, but this pair of sentences alone is priceless...

balabaster• 10 years ago

That pair of sentences alone was worth the read :P

nsns• 10 years ago

Also this one: The problem is that, acclimation aside, Pudding is still a cat — an innate master of not doing what you want him to do.

arethuza• 10 years ago

Our cats often make me think of the opening of War of the Worlds:

"intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us"

[OK Not 100% sure about the "vast intellect" bit - but "cool and unsympathetic" definitely].

codyb• 10 years ago

As well as the conclusion...

"'We're just doing this for curiosity' Curiosity eh? Maybe that's why the cats aren't cooperating."

Great read, enjoyable. I just love reading about big cats and small cats in general.

achr2• 10 years ago

Skip to 8 paragraphs in.

wdewind3• 10 years ago

Seriously...what a poorly written article. 2 paragraphs of content surrounded by fluff.

kgmpers• 10 years ago

Everyone's opinions are different and we all read for different reasons, but just because an article isn't a strictly factual, question->answer piece doesn't mean it's poorly written. As the article makes clear the answer is still unknown, therefore the purpose of the piece is to both show how science is done, even when it doesn't go as planned, and to get the reader thinking about something they may have never considered before about an animal many of us spend a lot of time with.

rconti• 10 years ago

I agree when the article takes half an hour to read, but this was still pretty short so I didn't mind it.

andrewl• 10 years ago

Good article. One difference I've seen between big cats and house cats is that big cats never (as far as I know) tuck their feet under their bodies in the "bread loaf" position that house cats do. I always assumed it was because it put too much pressure on the big cat's legs. So house cats often sit like this:

http://www.nedhardy.com/wp-content/uploads/images/2014/septe...

While big cats put their legs out in front, like this:

http://cbs.umn.edu/sites/cbs.umn.edu/files/public/african_li...

House cats will take the lion position, but lions do not take the house cat position.

KC8ZKF• 10 years ago

Do lion cubs tuck their feet? Perhaps it is a case of neoteny in house cats.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoteny

ams61102• 10 years ago

Another difference is that large cats have round pupils and small cats have vertical/slit pupils. Probably due to differnces in the type of prey they hunt -- small cats hunt rodents and other generally nocturnal creatures, so they have eyes acclimated to dim lighting. Big cats hunt antelopes and other diurnal animals so they have eyes acclimated to bright daylight.

dtparr• 10 years ago

hanoz• 10 years ago

Big cats don't have cushions?

jerf• 10 years ago

I've seen my housecats do this on hardwood floor.

Gravityloss• 10 years ago

Big cats don't need to preserve heat, because of the square-cube law?

nkrisc• 10 years ago

I always assumed that because house cats have a higher average body temperature than humans (around 103F), but live in an environment that is kept for human comfort (ambient temps designed for humans) they are more often trying to keep warm.

awqrre• 10 years ago

if you had a lion laying down on a very large couch, they might lay down like some house cats do (softer surface)...

alanh• 10 years ago

If any article needed a tl;dr, it’s this one. A headline like this, and they bury the lede deeper than Jimmy Hoffa’s skeleton.

Thanks, ypeterholmes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11074842

The Weird Thing About Cat Legs

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