Caturday felid trifecta: Mother cat carries food to her one surviving kitten; rude cats; cheetahs vs. lions: one roars, the other meows and chirps (and lagniappe)

September 21, 2019 • 10:15 am

We have four items today, including lagniappe.  The first video is of a feral mother cat carrying off a bag of food provided by kindly humans. Watch where she takes it.

If this doesn’t make you tear up, you’re made of stone. What a lovely story!

**************

From BuzzFeed, we have a selection of rude cats. I’ll show just a few.

Source

Source
Source
Source

*************

From the Treehugger site, we get a useful lesson on why cheetahs can’t roar but some other big cats can:

Tigers, leopards, and jaguars all roar too. As members of the genus Panthera, not only are they totally fierce creatures, but the epihyal bone in the voice box is replaced by a ligament, explains BBC Wildlife Magazine. “This can be stretched, creating a larger sound-producing passage and thus a wider range of pitch. The more the ligament extends, the lower the sound generated when air passes across the vocal cords. In addition, the cords are large, unbroken and fleshy, which produces deeper sounds.”

In fact, one study found that a tiger’s roar has the power to paralyze animals that hears it, including human with experience around tigers.

And then there’s the cheetah.

Listen to the King of the Jungle (well, the savannah) sound off:

Weighing in at up to 150 pounds, cheetahs are the world’s fastest land mammal. They can accelerate from 0 to 60 miles an hour in only three seconds, striking prey in the blink of an eye. But fearsome as they may be, there is something they can’t do: Roar. Nope, cheetahs meow like a housecat. And, unlike their roaring cousins, cheetahs also have the ability to purr. Listen here:

BBC explains that the bones of the cheetah’s voice box comprise a fixed structure, with divided vocal cords that vibrate with both inhaling and exhaling. “This structure is the same for all the ‘small’ cats. While this design enables these cats to purr continuously, it limits the range of other sounds and prevents them from being able to roar.” Awww.

Cheetahs have also perfected the chirrup – a bird-like chirp they often use to locate one another.

 

************

Lagniappe: Not an ideal way to transport a kitten, but still better than nothing:

h/t: Michael, Merilee, Su

11 thoughts on “Caturday felid trifecta: Mother cat carries food to her one surviving kitten; rude cats; cheetahs vs. lions: one roars, the other meows and chirps (and lagniappe)”

  2. The cheetah sounds like a bird. Best way to haul the cat in a car is in a carrier. put a nice pad or small blanket in there and it is safer than any other way. Seat belts might be nice for a photo.

  4. O, in the remote case that Any are “made of stone,”
    I make clear thus: Humans do this, too. I happen
    to know of very many a mama
    who herself has not eaten
    so that her, and others’, little humans can.

    Blue

  5. I wish I could roar. It seems like it would be a great way to vent frustration. Think of Tr*mp…ROOOARRR! I feel better already.

    1. For relief of frustration and because
      I cannot roar either, Mr Mark R, I just use
      a driveway, a ballpein hammer and these
      roll caps ( sans any kind o’gun ! ) as of
      a pix here:
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cap_gun .

      Smashing caps feeds four of one’s five senses
      and utterly relieves a work week’s crud.
      Especially upon any Caturday morning and
      along with one’s java !

      Blue

  8. Cheetahs and (lack of) roaring: I had hoped someone had figured out an *evolutionary* explanation why they lack that ability, rather than (merely?) the proximate one. Admittedly that sounds challenging, but biologists are clever, so you never know …

Comments are closed.