
The Weird Thing About Cat Legs - Amorymeltzer
http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/02/the-weird-thing-about-cat-legs/459369/?single_page=true
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andrewl
Good article. One difference I've seen between big cats and house cats is that
big cats never (as far as I know) tuck their feet under their bodies in the
"bread loaf" position that house cats do. I always assumed it was because it
put too much pressure on the big cat's legs. So house cats often sit like
this:

[http://www.nedhardy.com/wp-
content/uploads/images/2014/septe...](http://www.nedhardy.com/wp-
content/uploads/images/2014/september/cat_loaves/cat_loaves_17.jpg)

While big cats put their legs out in front, like this:

[http://cbs.umn.edu/sites/cbs.umn.edu/files/public/african_li...](http://cbs.umn.edu/sites/cbs.umn.edu/files/public/african_lion_king-
wide_1.jpg)

House cats will take the lion position, but lions do not take the house cat
position.

~~~
ams6110
Another difference is that large cats have round pupils and small cats have
vertical/slit pupils. Probably due to differnces in the type of prey they hunt
-- small cats hunt rodents and other generally nocturnal creatures, so they
have eyes acclimated to dim lighting. Big cats hunt antelopes and other
diurnal animals so they have eyes acclimated to bright daylight.

~~~
dtparr
Related: [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/08/science/eye-shape-may-
help...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/08/science/eye-shape-may-help-
distinguish-predator-from-prey.html)

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krylon
_We are, I realize, trying to out-stealth a cat. It 's going about as well as
you'd expect._

I don't have time read the full article right now, but this pair of sentences
alone is priceless...

~~~
nsns
Also this one: _The problem is that, acclimation aside, Pudding is still a cat
— an innate master of not doing what you want him to do._

~~~
codyb
As well as the conclusion...

"'We're just doing this for curiosity' Curiosity eh? Maybe that's why the cats
aren't cooperating."

Great read, enjoyable. I just love reading about big cats and small cats in
general.

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tshadwell
The "weird thing" being: 'A Cat's posture should change as it gets older, but
it doesn't'

~~~
tshadwell
Correction (thanks ams6110):

The "weird thing" being: 'The posture of larger cats should be different to
smaller cats, but it isn't'.

“It's famously said that a lion is just a scaled-up house cat,” says Anjali
Goswami from University College London, who works with Hutchinson. “That's
very weird.”

~~~
ypeterholmes
Still didn't quite capture it:

"When animals get bigger, their posture changes. Their legs tend to
straighten, becoming stiffer and more pillar-like to better support their
weight. Not so with cats. When a lion strides across the savannah, it has
essentially the same posture as the domesticated tabby that slinks over your
lap. Lions, tigers, and leopards—oh my—are, as Hutchinson writes, the only
large, crouching mammals."

However I agree this article could have been a tweet.

~~~
mst
I think the article could've stood a bunch of editing, but (at the least to
this repeat cat owner) the humour of their attempts to get the cats to co-
operate was well worth retaining.

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achr2
Skip to 8 paragraphs in.

~~~
wdewind
Seriously...what a poorly written article. 2 paragraphs of content surrounded
by fluff.

~~~
kgmpers
Everyone's opinions are different and we all read for different reasons, but
just because an article isn't a strictly factual, question->answer piece
doesn't mean it's poorly written. As the article makes clear the answer is
still unknown, therefore the purpose of the piece is to both show how science
is done, even when it doesn't go as planned, and to get the reader thinking
about something they may have never considered before about an animal many of
us spend a lot of time with.

~~~
wdewind
The article has a title, and the contents don't match the title until nearly
half way through the piece, and also don't really continue to match it past
there. The length of the introduction is appropriate for a short book, not a
2000 word essay. As the article makes clear, the answer is still unknown, and
so the article as titled should not have been written. Changing the title
alone could make this a better written piece, but as is it doesn't match the
expectations given to the reader.

~~~
ojbyrne
Its the Atlantic, not Science. And its an article about cats as much as it is
about science.

~~~
wdewind
Title.

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alanh
If any article needed a tl;dr, it’s this one. A headline like this, and they
bury the lede deeper than Jimmy Hoffa’s skeleton.

Thanks, ypeterholmes:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11074842](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11074842)

