Cats are (almost) liquid
https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(24)02024-8I just skimmed, but I didn’t see any mention whiskers. It’s seems to me that cats can make highly precise measurements of width just by sticking their heads in a space, but height judgments requires additional consideration.
Their whiskers are a major factor in their perception.
I think they can also dislocate their spine.
My cat likes to sit in what we call his "Buddha" position, with his back bent about 90 degrees, and his paws in front. This seems to be a common position. He'll sit like that for an hour.
> Wiskers are mentioned, but using the scientific name - vibrissae
Cats no less liquid than their shadows
Offer no angles to the wind.
They slip, diminished, neat through loopholes
Less than themselves; will not be pinned
Now I think of cats more like amorphous blobs with some hard bits stuck on. I think anyone who owns a cat will know what I mean by this.
I have no clue how that is even possible.
Taken from: https://www.gq.com/story/aleksei-goloborodko-real-life-diet
Is this really just a matter of stretching? I read the article and he sums it down to he needs to stretch every day (he said himself thst his diet doesn't matter too much) He was also in the circus since 4, but this doesn't seems like something I could do in a lifetime of practice.
Wish both of you a happy and derpy life together.
I spit my coffee out
https://web.archive.org/web/20050203111131/http://bonsaikitt...
Obviously it was a hoax, probably one of the first ones reaching the first generation of internet users. But lots of people fell for it.
"On the Rheology of Cats":
https://www.drgoulu.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Rheology-...
My wife and I go between two locations, today will be the first time 4 of the cats meet the murder noodle.
The reader becomes, in a sense, a greeble.
This paper would have been a fun project for a scientific illustrator.
These things also don't compare.
you are the one comparing apples to oranges - the internet has been around for 50 years and has shown its value - this one has just been published!
No, that's extremely optimistic, at best. We've learned that cats seem to use their knowledge of their height but not width when choosing to go (or not) through a hole.
That's it. We're promised follow-up research because it might be that, other than height, they also know and use their additional characteristics, like weight.
That's all. Are you seriously suggesting this knowledge might be helpful in building "surgery robots"?
> and countless things that I'm not even capable of imagining.
Maybe. Are the chances of that enough to justify the expense? Couldn't this work be done more cost-effectively (it's about cats - the world is filled with guys who would do all the experiments for free, given instructions, just for their cat(s) to be in a scientific study...)? Especially since we're talking about Hungary, which is not a super-rich nation.
In any case, allocating funds for research is probably a very hard problem, and I know nothing about it. Still, questioning the expenses is something any taxpayer should be able to do. Just give me good reasons why it had to cost $120k to feed 30 cats for a few weeks, and I'll be happily on my way.
https://figshare.com/articles/media/You_talkin_to_me_Functio...
and
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000632072...
> Péter Pongrácz: The human as a limited resource - a new paradigm to understand social behavior in dogs (Eötvös Loránd University)
On the other hand, I believe that researching how animals think, behave and "work" in general, is a very important part of being human. They're alive, too, and they defy tons of prejudice we have about them over and over. We need to revise tons of knowledge about animals and other living things, in general.
[0]: https://www.ias.edu/sites/default/files/library/UsefulnessHa...
I think if there's a large corpus of research supporting a hypothesis, any research retrying that hypothesis in an insignificant way can be disqualified from funding. If you challenge the hypothesis, or adding something significant to the dark areas of that hypothesis, you could be funded.
Moreover, if your research fails to prove that hypothesis, or proves the exact opposite, that should be also printed/published somewhere, because failing is equally important in science.
In short, tell us something we don't know in a provable way. That's it. This is what science is.
This is what I think with about your question with my Sysadmin/Researcher/Ph.D. hats combined.
And what happens when the primary means of funding is attached the volume of papers and not the quality or impact, as is what I believe to be the case generally here in the US?
But the fact that we aren't even allowed to ask questions without immediately being shut down as dissenters of all publicly funded research is problematic.
Public research should absolutely be at least partially evaluated by the very people funding it to begin with.
I suspect its because it makes for a catchy headline.
The contrast with dogs in the introduction is instructive: dogs tend to hunt over open fields rather than chasing prey into narrow dens, so it makes sense they would tend to make conservative eyeball judgments about whether they can fit into certain spaces. But cats will try to corner their prey in a tunnel/etc, so they have good reason to rely more on touch and experimentation ("ecologically-valid strategy").