It's a CUDDLING FIASCO!!! It's a CUDDLING FIASCO!!! It's a CUDDLING FIASCO!!! It's a CUDDLING FIASCO!!! It's a CUDDLING FIASCO!!! It's a CUDDLING FIASCO!!!
It's a CUDDLING FIASCO!!! It's a CUDDLING FIASCO!!! It's a CUDDLING FIASCO!!! It's a CUDDLING FIASCO!!! It's a CUDDLING FIASCO!!! It's a CUDDLING FIASCO!!!
"Why might I use these neanderthal cat facts" you ponder? Well I'll tell you bastard, because IT'S HOT!!! But truth be told, they can be used as intimidating pre-match whiz quiz threats, or as a female cop pick up line on the starry night, or even as good ice breakers on a New York Subway. Those sound pretty darn amazing to me!!!
I bolded all of the ones that I thought were the MOST interesting. So you can at least read those.
Note: All of the following facts are from The Encyclopedia of the Cat by: Michael Pollard, so if you see him around be sure to thank him, by means of licking.
Man-Eaters
- The most prolific man-eater on record managed to claim an estimated 436 human victims before being shot in 1907. She was known as the Champawat tigres.
- Cats have predated humans ever since we started evolving in Africa. Fossil human skulls have been found bearing the puncture scars from cat incisor teeth.
- Some 800-900 human victims lost their lives to cats each yeah in India around 1900. This suggests heavy predation from cats elsewhere.
- The first known man-eater was a lion. It is portrayed as a line drawing carved onto an Assyrian ivory panel dating from c. 800 BC
- Fishing cats are so robust and fearless that they are feared by local people despite their small size. They have been known to take small infants and kill leopards.
- The phenomenon of man-eating has been recorded in Asia and Africa. The cat species known to have turned man-eater are lion, tiger, and leopard.
- Man-eaters are usually female cats in search of easy prey to feed their cubs. Others are injured of sickly cats unable to catch their usual prey species.
- It has been shown in trials that man-eaters will sometimes not attack if a convincing mask is work on the back of the head, because cats like to spring from behind, so are fooled.
Records
- Towser; a female tortoiseshell domestic cat, holds the record for mouse catching. She is estimated to have caught some 29,000 with an average of three per day.
- A domestic tabby from Texas, called Dusty, gave birth to an incredible 420 kittens between 1935 and 1952
- The heaviest domestic cat known was an Australian tabby tom called �Himmy.� He died from respiratory failure, weighing some 46.9 lbs.
- The largest species of cat is the Siberian tiger, which attains an average total length of 10 ft 5 in, and is 42 inches tall at the shoulder.
- The smallest domestic breed of cat is called the Singapura. Early examples weighed between 4 and 6 lbs.
- The largest domestic breed of cat is called the Ragdoll, with males weighing in at between 15-20 lbs. Ragdolls are said to be immune to pain but this is not true.
Sex
- The male cat actually has a bone in its penis called the bacula. The bacula is used to stimulate the female into ovulating following copulation.
- Big cats may mate up to 100 times a day. This is a strategy by the male to ensure that his sperm and not a rival�s fertilize the eggs when ovulation occurs.
History
- In 1459, 20 lions were released in Florence to fight bulls and wolves also roaming the streets. The spectacle failed to occur though, as the lions fell asleep.
- Due to the cat�s reluctance to be trained in any way, the Roman�s used the image of a cat as a symbol for freedom at the feet of the goddess of liberty.
- The Aztecs of Central America used to worship a jaguar god. Killing a jaguar and wearing its entire skin was thought to bring amazing powers to the wearer.
- In the late Roman period, gladiators fought Asiatic Lions, which are now endangered to the wild.
- The earliest recorded use of cat skins for clothing by humans dates from c. 6,500 BC.
- The lion has often been used as a symbol of strength in English history. King Richard I was known as the Lion Heart, and lions often appear on family crests.
- The ancient Egyptians included a cat-like god in their beliefs. Cats were therefore treated with reverence and even buried as mummies after they died.
- The fishing cat of eastern Asia is a small but heavily built animal. It has adapted for its semi-aquatic lifestyle by developing partially webbed toes to aid swimming.
- The domestication of cats is estimated to have begun some 9,000 years ago. They were probably useful to early farmers for catching vermin such as mice.
- Scientists are generally agreed that the main ancestors of domestic cats are African wild cats rather than European, with the possibility of crossbreeding with jungle and other wild cats.
Folklore/Beliefs
- The very small black-footed cat, of Africa, is surrounded by myth and folklore, because of its fierce nature. It is held that it kills giraffes by pouncing at their necks.
- The Egyptian cat god Aelurus was so feared by worshippers that anyone who killed a cat was punished by death.
- European folklore commonly holds the black cat to be a symbol of bad luck, evil, or witchcraft. This is because Satan�s favorite form was believed to be the black cat.
- Aelurus, an Egyptian cat god, represented the moon. This was because of the nocturnal habits of the cat, and the elliptical moon-like shape of cat pupils
- Having helped a lion remove a thorn from its paw, Androcles, a slave of Roman legend, had his life saved when he was placed with the same grateful lion in the arena.
- There is an opalescent gem worn by those who believe in witchcraft, called Cat�s eye. It is so called because it reflects a streak of light when polished.
Random (and interesting!!) Facts
- Unlike dogs, cats are not pack animals, so they have no need to impress any superiors. This is why they have no inclination to obey and training instructions.
- Catnip (Nepeta cataria) contains a chemical with a small which causes cats to �flehmen,� a pleasurable reaction which includes the baring of teeth and grimacing.
-Cats only bury their feces when they feel it might otherwise betray the whereabouts of their den (or house with domestic cats); otherwise it is left as a territorial scent marker.
- Feral domestic cats will live in social groups if food is plentiful enough to prevent them from having to confront or fight one another too often
- Cheese used to be sold in Cheshire (England) moulded into the shape of a grinning cat as a joke to ward off hungry mice, hence the origin of the Cheshire cat.
Climbing/Jumping
- Cats can leap as much as 6 times their entire length
- Cats are so well designed for recovering from falls that they are far more likely to injure their lower jaws rather than hurting their backs or legs as they land
- Vertical surfaces can be climbed without claws, by the cat running at the edifice. As the cat impacts the surface it uses momentum to provide grip while it runs upward.
- When cats shake their heads after a jump, they do so to �reset� their organs of balance in their ears. There is a special fluid inside, which can be compared with a spirit level, though it works in rather a different way.
Young/Kittens
- Amazingly, a kitten from Switzerland once managed to follow a group of climbers right to the summit of the Matterhorn in the Alps, at 14, 691 ft in 1950.
- Kittens are always born with blue eyes
- Parent cats will often bring badly maimed animals to their young so that they can practice their hunting and killing expertise under adequate supervision.
- Play fighting between young cats or with their parents is vital. It teaches them the coordination and timing needed for hunting without the danger of injury.
Senses
- Cats can see 6 times better in the dark than humans
- Cats are very sensitive to the smell of chlorine in water. This is why they would much rather drink from a dirty puddle or pond than from a bowl of un-clean tap water.
- Cats can hear the very high pitched noises used by rodents. These calls fall between 20-50 kHz; they are beyond human hearing and known as ultrasound.
- Domestic cats have demonstrated excellent homing instincts by traveling hundreds of miles to find their familiar territory following a house move by their owners.
- Most small cats, including domestics, have a natural wariness of water because there are genuine dangers in the wild from drowning and attack from predators.
Specific Species
- There is an elusive wild cat known as the Onza in Mexico. It is only known from four specimens shot since 1938. The Aztecs are known to have kept them in zoos.
- Servals are renowned for their jumping ability. They are able to spring into the air some 5ft to catch birds.
-The sand cat is one of the few cats which digs burrows. It does so because there is very little shelter from the baking sun to be found in the deserts where it lives.
- Lynx use hairy feet to walk on snow by spreading their weight. Interestingly, sand cats use the same adaptation to help them walk on desert sand dunes
- Unlike most cats, the domestic Turkish Van enjoys water and can be found swimming often
- The reason why Siamese cats have a dark mask and dark tips on their feet and tails is because of a gene, which causes a reaction making colder regions grow dark hair.
Cat's Bodies
- The belly of a cat is its most vulnerable area. By rolling over and exposing its belly, a cat is therefore displaying a great deal of trust towards a person.
- Scratching objects serves to sharpen claws rather than blunt them because cats� claws are able to shed layers leaving them with new pristine needle-pointed tips.
- Cats have tongues covered in shard pair-like points called papillae. They are used to scrape blood and flesh from bones, and for raking their fur while grooming.
- Cat skeletons are remarkably similar between species, except for the tail. The cheetah has the most tail bones (28), while the lynx has the least (14)
- The claws of a cat are actually properly termed protractible as opposed to retractible. This is because muscles are required to stick them out, but they pull back automatically.
Sayings
- To live "under a cat's paw" is to live under the regime of a cruel ruler. It alludes to the way in which cats will often play with a mouse or bird before killing it.
- The idiom to "not let the cat out of the bag" comes from an old trick where a cat was substituted for a piglet in a sack following a barter.
- To "bell the cat" is the dangerous task for a mouse to perform to provide warning of its approach; an allusion to risking one�s own life to save the lives of others.
- To "become a cat's paw" is to be manipulated. There is a fable which tells of a monkey which uses the paw of a live cat to drag roasted chestnuts from a fire.
- "Fighting like cat and dog" is a familiar description for some people. The animals do not like each other because wild dogs and cats are in direct competition for food.
- The idiom "curiosity killed the cat" is derived from the domestic cat�s inquisitiveness, which often gets it into some dangerous situations unexpectedly.
- "Catnapping" is a term used to describe short or intermittent dozing in people.
- There is a saying "Before the cat can lick its ear," which means never since cats cannot lick their own ears.
Big Cats
- Only seven of the cat species are scientifically classified as "big cats." They are: the lion, tiger, leopard, jaguar, snow leopard, clouded leopard, and cheetah.
- Cheetahs end their chase after tripping the animal over. They then suffocate the luckless animal by biting onto its windpipe until it is asphyxiated.
- The cheetah is renowned for being the fastest land animal. It has proved a brief maximum speed of 70 mph.
- The tibia and fibula are fused together in the cheetahs legs, to assist sprinting. The resulting lack of lateral movement, however, makes them unable to climb.
- After a change of leadership in a lion pride, it is common for the new dominant male to kill and even eat any cubs, so that only cubs carrying his genes will be cared for.
- When lions gather hairballs in their stomach they can accumulate minerals over time and eventually become smooth and polished like black stones.
- There is a noticeable trend with the different subspecies of tiger for them to become progressively larger and paler the further north they live, as an adaptation to climate.
Eating
- The molar teeth of cats, known as the carnissials, have become specialized for eating meat. They shear flesh like a pair of scissors as the cat uses the side of its mouth.
- The small incisor teeth of cats are used to remove skin from animals before eating begins. They are also used to nibble at parasites.
- Wild cats often eat the intestines of their victims before any meat. This may be because they contain certain essential minerals and fats.
- Cats eat grass to help vomit up hairballs.
Hunting/Foods
- Cannibalism does occur in cats, but only in certain conditions. Larger cat species will, however, kill and eat smaller cat species whenever they get the chance.
- Cats have a natural dislike of sweet tasting foods because they are so well evolved as carnivores that they cannot digest sugars very well. They convert fats instead.
- Both hunting and observation of big cats in India and Africa is traditionally carried out on the backs of elephants, the only land animal not afraid of them.
Disease
- White cats with blue eyes have a genetic predisposition to being congenitally deaf. This is because the genes also carry a mutation which can cause the ailment.
Whiskers
- The whiskers of a cat are devices for indirectly feeling the immediate environment. When something touches a whisker it is sensed by special cells surrounding the route.
- Whiskers are also used for balance.
-Whiskers are also used to assess the dimensions of spaces in the dark. They also supply the cat with added information when prey is caught and too close to look at.
Purring/Noises
- Behavior such as growling, hissing, hair raising, back arching, teeth baring, ear flattening, and side leaning are all designed to win arguments without injury.
- The process of purring is not fully understood, but cats are able to purr uninterrupted while breathing, and kittens can even suckle milk at the same time.
- Purring is most obviously used to express pleasure, but cats are known to purr when they are ill or injured, suggesting that it comforts them in times of stress.
- Purring in small cats is thought to have evolved because it has a low frequency, so it is unlikely to betray the location of a den to larger predators.
- Only the smaller wild cat species are able to purr like domestic cats. They all belong to the genus Felis. The larger cat species roar to express the same feeling.
Skin/Coat
- Occasionally cheetahs are born with stripes instead of the usual spots on their coats. They are known as king cheetahs and were once thought to be a separate species.
- The original �black panther� is the black form of the leopard. Melanism is most common in leopards, so they were once thought of as a different species - the panther.
- Melanism, the occurrence of a very dark of black coat, has been recorded in 13 species of cat. It does vary in darkness, but the true markings can usually be detected.
- Pale forms of cat display leucism, resulting in a faded looking coat. This is not albinoism, which occurs rarely and results in pure white cats with pink eyes.
