Cats Make Nearly 300 Different Facial Expressions | Hacker News Reader

Cats Make Nearly 300 Different Facial Expressions

smithsonianmag.com

66 pointsbookofjoe21 comments

I was bringing my cat home to my parents' for the holidays and thought about making a guide for my family on what different facial expressions meant. Sometimes big pupils means hyper, sometimes cuddly. Small slit pupils could mean lazy with a yawning demeanor or otherwise not in the mood to talk. Throw in the permutations of tail down, up, or hooked and you can psychoanalyze him to his core.

Can confirm, after hundreds of gbs of cat photos and movies I still haven't found them all. I must continue my research

>Feline Faces: Unraveling the Social Function of Domestic Cat Facial Signals

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03766...

I have a cat who does not speak cat. He thinks growling and hissing are part of a normal conversation. Other cats seem to recognize this, and ignore his growling. He doesn't bite, he licks things.

If you're interested in cat genetics, I once read a great book called "Cats are Not Peas."

I wonder if you have a neurodivergent cat? It's interesting that the other cats ignore his behavior, any other kinds of notable interactions between them?

He is definitely something. Here is a short history:

- He was brought to me at 6 days old with two head injuries (dog crates are not great for kittens).

- He was half the size of his littermates. Kittens reach certain milestones by 8 weeks. He took 16 weeks to reach those milestones.

- He could not latch in order to nurse. I think he has a congenital deformation. His tongue hangs out a lot.

- Since his mom rejected him, he was raised as a "singleton," or a kitten without littermates. These kittens always turn out with an odd habit or two.

I have notable facts, although they involve human interactions:

- His licking is compulsive. If you put your hand near him or touch him, he has to lick.

- He likes to be pet, but the licking instinct overwhelms everything else. I pet him on the back of his head so he can't see my hand and he can ignore it easier.

- I ask him if he wants to be pet with a hand signal. This is because he didn't like being touched until I started petting the back of his head. Then he realized he liked it.

- He couldn't jump higher than six inches for the first year of his life.

- If you make loud sniffing noises near him, he starts sniffing too. Does he recognize that my nose is a nose? Who knows.

Cats mostly meow at humans, not cats.

If you watch recordings of cameras attached to cats, you will see that this isn't the case. Cats ofter "talk" to each other with all sorts of little meows.

I have seen this repeated as fact in various writings about cats a few times, and it is quite false. My family has been feeding generations of stray cats in our backyard for like 8 years, and they do meow at each other, sometimes (though not usually, admittedly) back and forth in what is quite probably a full-on conversation. Their social bonds are far more complex than most people would think, and they even have politics.

This can signal a source of pain or discomfort. Check If your cat licks its pawns or articulations too often. Specially if is an old cat

I actually watched him learn to make growling noises as a kitten! He surprised himself (and me), then did it again. He was resting at the time.

See this comment for more of his history: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38146535

ok, interesting history.

I wonder if the compulsive licking or the loud sniffing is a way to cope with a deficient smell sense so he uses the taste instead. I'm just speculating.

If there is a malformation in the jaw with a hanging tongue maybe the nose was affected also?. You could suspect that the cat has problems to smell if it does not react to a hidden catweed bag or hidden food.

Not sure why but this number seems comically low to me, like I would guess this number to be in the thousands not a few hundred. All the permutations of all the different parts of their faces and ears.

would like to see a field guide on this and how it varies between populations

this is suggesting an innate common language which I think is a foolish assumption

We need an Ai app to help identify them

I thought this was pretty funny so you got an upvote from me.

the article mentions this so not really original

as did Bale's Patrick Bateman ...

In the morning if my whiskers are a little stiff I'll wiggle them while kneading my paws on my human. I can wake him up at 6am now. After I wake him up I make him heat my wet food in the microwave. In the litter box I use a smell activated silicon...

Impressive, very nice. Now let's see Paul Allen's cat.

    FEED ME A STRAY HUMAN

Reply on news.ycombinator.com