The surprising physics of cats’ drinking
Cat fanciers appreciate the gravity-defying grace and exquisite balance of their feline friends. But do they know that those traits extend even to the way cats lap milk?Researchers analyzed the way domestic and big cats lap and found that felines of all sizes take advantage of a perfect balance between two physical forces. The results were published in the Nov. 11 online edition of the journal Science.It was known that when cats lap, they extend their tongues straight down toward the bowl with the tip of the tongue curled backwards, so that the top of the tongue touches the liquid first. That insight came from a 1940 video of a cat lapping milk, made by Harold “Doc” Edgerton, the MIT electrical engineering professor who first used strobe lights in photography to stop action. But recent high-speed videos made by MIT, Virginia Tech and Princeton researchers reveal that the top of...