Bird’s Eye: Some science, and some eye-candy. Slo-mo film teaches us how a dog shakes its head to dry itself, and how a cat drinks milk by creating a column of milk with its tongue. Then we see a home movie of a cat scaring off and alligator, and a croc pulling on an elephant’s trunk (just like in the Just So Stories!)
* Wet Dog Shake J-Walk Blog
* The Surprising Physics Of Cats’ Drinking MIT
It was known that when cats lap, they extend their tongues straight down toward the bowl with the tip of the tongue curled backwards, so that the top of the tongue touches the liquid first. That insight came from a 1940 film of a cat lapping milk, [cat at 4:40] made by Harold “Doc” Edgerton, the MIT electrical engineering professor who first used strobe lights in photography to stop action.
But recent high-speed videos made by MIT, Virginia Tech and Princeton researchers reveal that the top of the cat’s tongue is the only surface to touch the liquid. Cats, unlike dogs, don’t dip their tongues into the liquid like ladles. The cat’s lapping mechanism is far more subtle and elegant. The smooth tip of the tongue barely touches the surface of the liquid before the cat draws its tongue back up. As it does so, a column of liquid forms between the moving tongue and the liquid’s surface. The cat then closes its mouth, pinching off the top of the column for a nice drink, while keeping its chin dry.
