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Animals that do not whisk, but have motile whiskers, presumably also gain some advantage from the investment in musculature. Dorothy Souza, in her book Look What Whiskers Can Do [35] reports some whisker movement during prey capture (in cats, in this case): Whiskers bend forward as the cat pounces. Teeth grasp the mouse tightly around its neck.
A cat's whiskers are more than twice as thick as ordinary cat hairs, and their roots are three times deeper in a cat's tissue than other hairs. They have numerous nerve endings at their base, which give cats extraordinarily detailed information about nearby air movements and objects with which they make physical contact.
The skin has a texture of chamois leather, [2] as it has fine hairs, or the cat may be completely hairless. Whiskers may be present, either whole or broken, or may be totally absent. Per the breed standards, they have a somewhat wedge-shaped head with large eyes and ears, quite long legs and tail, and neat rounded paws.
Researchers have pulled the mummy of a newborn saber-toothed cat that died at least 35,000 years ago from Siberia’s permafrost — and the kitten still has its whiskers and claws attached.
In fact, just this week a new study published in the Behavioural Processes journal revealed that cats have 276 facial expressions, a range that is thought to have evolved as a result of living ...
Scientists used forensic evidence from cats’ whiskers to see what regular hunters of wildlife had been eating.
Tortoiseshell cats have particolored coats with patches of various shades of orange, red, grey, and black, and sometimes white. The size of the patches can vary from a fine speckled pattern to large areas of color. Typically, the more white a cat has, the more solid the patches of color.
Most cat species have a haploid number of 18 or 19. Central and South American cats have a haploid number of 18, possibly due to the combination of two smaller chromosomes into a larger one. [31] Felidae have type IIx muscle fibers three times more powerful than the muscle fibers of human athletes. [32]