News tagged with cats
Schrodinger's Cat Experiment Proposed
(PhysOrg.com) -- One of the classical problems in quantum mechanics concerns a man and his feline companion. The man has placed his cat in an opaque tank and is slowing pumping it full of poison. Now until ...
Sep 24, 2009 |
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Study reveals the subtle dynamics underpinning how cats drink (w/ Video)
(PhysOrg.com) -- Cat fanciers everywhere appreciate the gravity-defying grace and exquisite balance of their feline friends. But do they know those traits extend even to the way cats lap milk?
Nov 11, 2010 |
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Cat brain: A step toward the electronic equivalent
A cat can recognize a face faster and more efficiently than a supercomputer. That's one reason a feline brain is the model for a biologically-inspired computer project involving the University of Michigan.
Apr 14, 2010 |
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Researchers track the secret lives of feral and free-roaming house cats
Researchers (and some cat-owners) wanted to know: What do feral and free-roaming house cats do when they're out of sight? A two-year study offers a first look at the daily lives of these feline paupers and ...
May 26, 2011 |
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Researchers explore link between schizophrenia, cat parasite
Johns Hopkins University scientists trying to determine why people develop serious mental illness are focusing on an unlikely factor: a common parasite spread by cats.
Medicine & Health / Medical research
Aug 04, 2010 |
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Paws for thought: Oscar the bionic cat
A cat whose back legs were chopped off in a farming accident has been given a new bionic pair, in a ground-breaking feline first in Britain.
Jun 25, 2010 |
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13,000-Year-Old Stone Tool Cache in Colorado Shows Evidence of Camel, Horse Butchering
(PhysOrg.com) -- A biochemical analysis of a rare Clovis-era stone tool cache recently unearthed in the city limits of Boulder, Colo., indicates some of the implements were used to butcher ice-age camels and ...
Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils
Feb 25, 2009 |
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House cats know what they want and how to get it from you
Anyone who has ever had cats knows how difficult it can be to get them to do anything they don't already want to do. But it seems that the house cats themselves have had distinctly less trouble getting humans ...
Jul 13, 2009 |
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On the Trail of a Cosmic Cat (w/ Video)
(PhysOrg.com) -- ESO has just released a stunning new image of the vast cloud known as the Cat’s Paw Nebula or NGC 6334. This complex region of gas and dust, where numerous massive stars are born, lies near ...
Jan 20, 2010 |
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The 'molecular octopus': A little brother of 'Schroedinger's cat'
For the first time – as presented in Nature Communications - the quantum behaviour of molecules consisting of more than 400 atoms was demonstrated by quantum physicists based at the University of Vienna in collaboration with c ...
Apr 05, 2011 |
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Quantum cat's 'whiskers' offer advanced sensors
(PhysOrg.com) -- A team led by Oxford University scientists has turned one of the key problems with quantum entangled systems - that they are easily ‘disturbed’ by their environment - into an advantage which ...
Apr 24, 2009 |
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Wild cat mimics monkey calls
In a fascinating example of vocal mimicry, researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and UFAM (Federal University of Amazonas) have documented a wild cat species imitating the call of its intended ...
Jul 08, 2010 |
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Mammoth Hunters - Out With a Whimper or a Bang?
(PhysOrg.com) -- Did a change in climate or an extraterrestrial impact bring an end to the beasts and people that roamed the Southwest shortly after the last ice age?
Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils
Apr 06, 2010 |
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Scientists reveal family tree of 'super-sized lions'
(PhysOrg.com) -- The giant cats that roamed the British Isles, as well as Europe and North America, as recently as 13,000 years ago were lions rather than giant jaguars or tigers, a team led by Oxford University ...
Mar 31, 2009 |
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Even healthy cats act sick when their routine is disrupted
A cat regularly vomiting hairballs or refusing to eat probably isn't being finicky or otherwise "cat-like," despite what conventional wisdom might say. There is a good chance that the cat is acting sick because of the stress ...
Jan 03, 2011 |
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Cat
Felis catus domestica (invalid junior synonym) Felis silvestris catus
The cat (Felis catus), also known as the domestic cat or house cat to distinguish it from other felines and felids, is a small predatory carnivorous species of crepuscular mammal that is valued by humans for its companionship and its ability to hunt vermin, snakes, and other unwanted household pests. It has been associated with humans for at least 9,500 years.
A skilled predator, the cat is known to hunt over 1,000 species for food. It can be trained to obey simple commands. Individual cats have also been known to learn on their own to manipulate simple mechanisms, such as doorknobs and toilet handles. Cats use a variety of vocalizations and types of body language for communication, including meowing, purring, "trilling", hissing, growling, squeaking, chirping, clicking, and grunting. Cats may be the most popular pet in the world, with over 600 million in homes all over the world. They are also bred and shown as registered pedigree pets. This hobby is known as "cat fancy".
Until recently the cat was commonly believed to have been domesticated in ancient Egypt, where it was a cult animal. However, in 2004, the earliest known location of cat domestication was discovered to be ancient Cyprus, and a subsequent study in 2007 found that the lines of descent of all house cats probably run through as few as five self-domesticating African Wildcats (Felis silvestris lybica) circa 8000 BC, in the Near East.
For more information about Cat, read the full article at
Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
