Animal Study: How Dogs and Cats Drink Fluids

Are the differences in the mechanisms of drinking fluids and drinking strategies by dogs and cats worth an in-depth study? According to a Wired article I came across, one civil engineer, Roman Stocker, felt they are.

How This Odd Animal Study Began

One morning three years ago, while he was watching his house cat, Cutta Cutta, eating breakfast, Stocker became intrigued with how cats lap fluids.  

"I started to think, there had to be something interesting about the mechanisms of how the cat was getting the water or milk into the mouth, because it had to overcome gravity,” he said.

How This Animal Study Was Conducted

Since his cat’s tongue motions were much too fast for him to observe with the naked eye, Stocker borrowed a high-speed video recorder from one of his MIT colleagues. He then recorded video on the high-tech camera of his cat lapping up milk from a bowl.

After watching the first video, he and his colleague filmed the cat lapping up water with a little bit of yogurt mixed in ("for visual contrast and palatability") at 120 frames per second.

Conclusions from This Animal Study

After conducting his experiment, Stocker learned that cat’s tongues operate similarly to elephant trunks or octopus tentacles. As a result of his study, he postulated that a template could be designed which might be useful in the design of flexible, soft robots.

He also arrived at a conclusion that will delight cat lovers.

"Cats are smarter than dogs from the point of view of fluid mechanics,” he said.

What Is the Overall Point of This Animal Study, and Others Like It?

To be honest, there are times when I find the plethora of animal-related "scientific" investigations I run across just simply mind boggling. As a result, I start suspecting that perhaps a few of these researchers may just have too much time on their hands.

While some of the information is both enlightening and fascinating, I often wonder what in the world inspires these investigators to delve so deeply into some of these topics and how the resulting implications would be useful to animal lovers.

How would it be helpful to me to know that when drinking, cats use only the tips of their tongue to pull up columns of fluid up to their mouths, while dogs scoop up the liquids into their jaws? While this is an interesting bit of trivia, I am still trying to grasp the rationale for the study, and of what use the information is not only to me, but to those owned by either one of these species.

Obviously this was a serious research project not performed tongue in cheek.  Or was it?

What do you think? Tell us in a comment.