Health & Science

The physics of feline drinking; The heavy have better noses; Job stress harms women’s health; The downside of daydreaming

The physics of feline drinking

Cats show a mastery of fluid dynamics every time they take a drink of water, researchers have found. Like most other carnivores, they can’t fully close their mouths to create suction the way humans do. Dogs solve the problem by curling their tongue into a cup-like shape and scooping up water, which can be a sloppy process. Cats are classier. Using a high-speed camera, researchers at MIT learned that a cat curls the tip of its tongue downward and merely touches it to the water’s surface. As the tongue is quickly drawn back, it pulls up a column of liquid, which the cat captures by snapping its jaws shut. The key is timing: Cats know instinctively when the inertial force that keeps the water flowing upward will be overcome by gravity pulling it downward. “There is a time when the volume of a column is at a maximum, which is the time at which the cat closes its jaw,” study author Roman Stocker, a biophysicist at MIT, tells BBC.com. The researchers calculated the ideal lap rate for felines of different sizes and confirmed it by filming big zoo cats as they drank. Stocker had been moved to study the phenomenon by watching his own cat, Cutta Cutta, lapping at its water bowl. “I realized there was an interesting biomechanics problem hidden behind that very simple action.”

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