Who does not love cats and does not want to find out some amazing facts about these lovely, tender and sweet animals? We promise you will be surprised to know them!
1. Asians eat about four million cats a year.
2. On average, cats spend 2/3 a day sleeping. This means that a nine-year-old cat was active only for three years of its life.
3. Unlike dogs, cats do not have a sweet tooth. Scientists believe that this is due to a mutation in one of the key taste receptors.
4. Lady-cats, as a rule, “dig” with their right paws, and tomcats with their left ones.
5. A cat cannot climb a tree upside down due to its claw position. In order to come down from the tree, a feline needs to retreat, backing backwards.
Cats make about 100 different sounds. Dogs – only 10
7. The brain of a cat is biologically closer to the human than the brain of a dog. The same areas of the brain are responsible for emotions both of cats and humans.
8. More than 500 million domestic cats live in the world, there are about 40 different breeds.
9. The cat has about 12 whiskers on each side of the muzzle.
10. In ancient Egypt, after the death of a domestic cat family members shaved their eyebrows and mourned it in such a way. They also held a funeral, during which they drank wine and beat themselves in the chest. They embalmed their beloved kitty and placed in a family tomb or in a pet graveyard with tiny mummies of mice.
As a fact, in 1888, people found more than 300,000 mummified cats in Egyptian cemeteries. They removed fabric from tombs, took it to England and the USA and used it as a fertilizer.
The cat smuggling in ancient Egypt could lead to death penalty by law
12. Most cats give birth to a litter of one to nine kittens. Meanwhile, there were 19 kittens in the largest known litter, and 15 kittens survived.
13. The early ancestors of modern cats lived about 30 million years ago. Scientists called them “Proailurus”, which means “first cat” in Greek. The group of animals to which modern cats belong, appeared about 12 million years ago.
14. The largest wild cat today is the Amur tiger. It can grow more than 3.6 metres in length (142 inches, the size of a small car) and weigh up to 320 kg (705 lbs). Meanwhile the smallest wildcat today is the Blackfoot Cat. Females are less than 50 cm (20 inches) in length and can weigh only 1.2 kg (2.6 lbs).
15. Although in many parts of Europe and North America a black cat is considered a bad sign, in the UK and Australia a meeting with a black cat foreshadows good luck.
16. The most popular breed of cats in the world is the Persian cat, followed by the Maine Coon and the Siamese Cat. By the way, some Siamese cats squint because of the special structure of the eye nerves.
17. There is a breed of cats who adores swimming. The fur of the Turkish Van, a breed bred in Central Asia, has a unique texture that makes it waterproof.
18. The most expensive cat in the world named Little Nicky cost its owner $ 50,000. It is a clone of its former cat who died of old age.
19. Cat’s eyesight is both better and worse than human. Better – because cats see much better in the dark and have a wider angle of peripheral vision. Worse – because they do not distinguish colors like people. For example, grass seems red to cat.
20. In Spanish-Jewish folklore, there is a parable that Adam’s first wife, Lilith, turned into a black vampire cat, sucking the blood of sleeping babies. Perhaps it was this fact that caused the belief that a cat could strangle a sleeping baby or “suck” its breath.
21. The most famous comic cat in literature is the Cheshire Cat in Lewis Carroll’s novel “Alice in Wonderland”. Due to its ability to fade, this mysterious character personifies magic and witchcraft, historically associated with cats.
In the original Italian version of Cinderella, the good godfather was a cat
23. In the Holland embassy in Moscow, staff noticed that two Siamese cats from time to time began to meow and scratched the walls of the building. After that, diplomats finally decided to find out what was going on, thinking that they would find mice. Instead, they found Russian spy microphones hidden in the walls. The cats heard the microphones when they were turned on.
At the same time, everyone knows that cats are very sensitive to vibration. They can feel earthquake shocks 10 to 15 minutes earlier than people.
24. The ability of cats to find a way home is called “psi-travel.” According to experts, cats either determine their location by the angle of sunlight, or cats have magnetized cells in the brain that act like a compass.
The cat’s jaws do not move from side to side, so the cat cannot chew large chunks of food
26. Cats very rarely meow on other cats, usually – only on humans. The cat is likely to spit, purr or hiss to other cats.
27. The back of the cat is very flexible, because it has 53 loosely adjacent vertebrae. People have only 34 of them.
28. Approximately 1/3 of cat owners believe that their pets can easily read their thoughts.
29. All cats hide their claws at rest, with the exception of the cheetah.
Excessive love for cats is called Ailurophilia (from Greek: cats + lover)
31. Most of the cats were short-haired until, about 100 years ago, experiments with breeding and crossing breeds came into fashion.
32. Cats have 32 muscles that control the outer ear (humans only have 6 of them). Therefore, cats can rotate their ears independently 180 degrees.
33. One of the reasons why felines sleep so much is because their growth hormone, in other words, just like in humans, releases only during sleep.
Cats have approximately 20 155 hairs per square centimeter (4 inches)
35. The heaviest cat listed in the Guinness Book of Records was Himmy from Queensland, Australia. It weighed 21 kg (46 lbs) and died at the age of 10.
At the same time, the oldest cat in the Guinness Book of Records was Crème Puff from Austin, Texas. It lived from 1967 to August 6, 2005 and died three days after his thirty-eighth birthday. Cats usually live up to 20 years, which is equivalent to 96 years of human age.
36. In Scotland, there is a memorial tower in honor of a cat named Tauser, who caught almost 30,000 mice in his life.
37. Cats were brought to North and South America by Europeans in the 1750s to control pests.
38. The first organisation of the cat show ever took place in 1871 in London. Later, cat shows became popular all over the world.
The first famous cartoon cat was Felix the cat, which appeared in 1919
40. Felines have 230 bones in the body (in comparison to only 206 in humans). Cats do not have a clavicle, therefore, they can crawl into any hole the size of their head.
41. The nose of kitties is as unique as the human fingerprints.
42. The heart of a cat beats almost twice as fast as a human (from 110 to 140 beats per minute).
43. Cats don’t have sweat glands all over their bodies, like humans. Therefore, they only sweat through their paws.
44. In just seven years, one pair of cats and their descendants can produce a total of 420,000 kittens. Meanwhile, a cat called Dusty set a record for the number of offspring. During this ladycat’s life it gave birth to 420 kittens.
45. An adult cat has 30 teeth. Kittens have 26 milk teeth, which fall at the age of six months.
46. Unlike dogs, cats have hardly changed during the process of domestication.
The claws on the hind legs of the cat are not as sharp as on the front ones
48. The richest cat in the world, Blackie, inherited £ 15 million from its owner, Ben Ree.
