Cats: Caressing the Tiger Page #3

the "evening crazies",

when pent-up hunting instincts

erupt into a frenzy.

Triggered by a prey's movements,

even the most well-fed cat may hunt

given the opportunity.

But the connection between making a

kill and eating it has to be learned.

An inexperienced cat may

attack with precision,

yet not recognize its kill as food.

As hunters that rely on stealth,

cats are always alert for cues

that could mean food or danger.

While smell is not

their primary sense,

no odor escapes them.

They use smell mainly to find the

territorial boundaries of other cats

or to know if other cats

have been in their territory.

To gather information

about potential mates,

cats use a second olfactory system

in the roof of the mouth.

Inhaling the airborne scent

while curling the upper lip

creates the grimacing look.

Cats move their funnel-shaped ears

to zero in on sounds.

They probably have

better acoustical discrimination

than either dogs or humans.

The function of a cat's whiskers

is not entirely understood.

But if they are severed,

the animal may lose its equilibrium

and stumble into things.

It may even be unable

to make a clean kill.

Whiskers also transmit

information about captured prey.

To remove all traces of food,

cats regularly groom.

Fastidiousness is one of

their best known traits.

Coarse and abrasive liken sandpaper,

the tongue is covered with

hook-like projection

that can even tear flesh

from bone after a kill.

To writers, artists, and poets,

cat's eyes have embodied all

things magical and mysterious.

The scientist knows that vision

is one of the cat's most vital senses,

the key to its success as a hunter.

At Florida State University,

the question of how cats see the world

has been studied for

more than 25 years.

Professor of Neuroscience

and Psychology,

Dr. Mark Berkley defied cynics

who told him the independent cat would

never make a good laboratory subject.

He designed a system that not only

works, but actually appeals to the cat

Banking on the animal's

inquisitiveness,

Berkley built a box

that invites exploration.

And when it responds correctly,

the cat is rewarded with food.

Generated by a computer,

an image will appear in front of the

cat on one side of the screen.

The cat must tell the researchers,

"Yes, I can see that".

It does so by poking the

right-hand plexiglass panel

when the image appears on the right,

and the other side when the

image appears on the left.

From the work of Berkley and others,

we know cats cannot distinguish

between human faces,

have poor color vision, and like us,

experience visual illusions.

But perhaps most noteworthy

is their ability to see at night.

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