Kitten Lovers: Cuteness Overload

strangerep · Oct 18, 2023

All I could think of was quietly getting into one of those cars and suddenly revving the engine hard.

There must be something wrong with me.

BillTre · Oct 26, 2023

Domesticated cat article in a news article in Science.
Cats have lots of facial expressions:

In a study published this month in Behavioural Processes, researchers tallied 276 different feline facial expressions, used to communicate hostile and friendly intent and everything in between. What’s more, the team found, we humans might be to thank: Our feline friends may have evolved this range of sneers, smiles, and grimaces over the course of their 10,000-year history with us.

The pair discovered a total of 276 distinct facial expressions made toward other cats—not so far removed from the 357 produced by chimpanzees, Florkiewicz says, and well more than many had thought cats capable of. Each expression combined about four of 26 unique facial movements, including parted lips, jaw drops, dilated or constricted pupils, blinks and half blinks, pulled lip corners, nose licks, protracted or retracted whiskers, and/or various ear positions. By comparison, humans have 44 unique facial movements, although researchers are still working out how many different expressions they combine into, Florkiewicz says. Dogs have 27 facial movements, but again, their total number of expressions isn’t known.

In the current study, the duo found that the vast majority of the cats’ expressions were either distinctly friendly (45%) or distinctly aggressive (37%), the scientists say. The remaining 18% were—like the Cheshire Cat’s smile—so ambiguous that they fell into both categories.