Tuesday, January 29, 2008

 

Your cat

Grooming begins at the moment of birth. Immediately after delivering their litters, both wild and domestic females lick off the layer of membranes covering each cub or kitten, simultaneously cleaning and warming the newborns. By 2 or 3 weeks of age, the youngsters have the physical skills and the motivation to groom themselves.
The papillae-spiked tongue is a feline's primary grooming tool. The moistening saliva and rough tongue work together to scrub and align the hairs of its coat. And thanks to the incredible suppleness of its spine, a cat can lick almost every part of its body, except for the head and face. To clean these places, cats lick their paws and then rub them over the face and head. If frustrated by a particularly rough, sticky or dirty patch on its coat, a cat may resort to using its teeth to tear or bite off the offensive material, along with the hairs. As a consequence of all this grooming, felines ingest a considerable amount of dead hair, which they occasionally vomit as hairballs. Longhair domestic breeds are prone to impaction of hair in the intestinal tract and may need regular doses of a hairball remedy to avoid serious problems. Frequent grooming of both longhair and shorthair cats by their owners helps to prevent problems by removing loose hair before it is swallowed.
Grooming also regulates body temperature.

Monday, January 28, 2008

 

Your cat

Many of the cat's remarkable mental and physical abilities are dismissed as simply instinctive. However, just as humans are born with innate communication skills but must learn over time to master a language, cats refine many of their inborn abilities through practice. The widely-held belief that they learn through observation and imitation of their mother or other cats is now being called into question. Cats do learn, but in a different way than do humans or dogs; they have a special kind of intelligence.
A Cat Never ForgetsOnce attained, even if by accident or trial and error, most knowledge is retained for life, thanks to the cat's excellent memory. Even hunting techniques buried under years of neglect in the well-fed house cat's brain will be recalled with ease should the feline, for some reason, ever have to fend for itself.
Easily frightened, a cat will retain very strong memories of any incident that it considers threatening. All it takes is one face-to-face encounter with a growling dog to convince a feline that the entire canine species is best avoided forever. However, positive experiences are just as easily stored and recalled, particularly if they have to do with food or play.
As any cat owner knows, domestic felines respond well to familiar sounds, such as can openers, the rattling of their dry-food bags or the crinkly noise of a favorite toy. Many of them also have an uncanny ability to know the hour of their regular breakfast time, waking up their owner if he or she tries to sleep in.

Thursday, January 10, 2008

 
Play is loosely defined by scientists as vigorous movements performed by the young for no immediate benefit, but which often have counterparts in serious adult behavior. Play may be solitary, as in the studying of and pouncing on a swaying blade of grass by a leopard cub, or social, as when wolf pack-mates romp and nip at one another. It is a common activity among most mammals, especially those most intelligent and social, such as primates, dolphins and carnivores. Invertebrates, fish and reptiles lack play behavior, but it has been observed among birds such as ravens.
Play requires huge amounts of extra energy, and it cuts into food-gathering time. Furthermore, it often exposes the young to predators while at the same time involving potentially dangerous activities. Despite its high costs, mammals continue to play, in part because it teaches them essential skills for survival. For example, young gibbons swing from branches — a critical adult skill — even after falling to the forest floor.
Sometimes play enables adults to display better parenting skills. Monkeys and apes, for instance, show more attention and patience with their offspring when they have had experience as juveniles playing with their younger siblings.

Monday, January 07, 2008

 
Although new species are still being discovered at a rapid rate, the present count stands at 4,629 mammal species. Together, mammals represent one of the five major groups of vertebrates—animals that possess vertebral columns—a group that also includes fish, amphibians, reptiles, and birds.
Several of the features that distinguish mammals from other vertebrates only become evident through studying the mammal's basic skeletal structure. For example, unlike other vertebrates, mammals have three middle-ear bones, or ossicles.
Another skeletal difference can be seen in the mammalian dentary, the tooth-bearing part of the lower jaw, which changed considerably as mammals evolved. In keeping with a generalized evolutionary trend toward a reduction in the number of bones in the skull, most of the lower jaw bones became smaller and eventually disappeared. Some, however, became the ossicles of the middle ear, and one, the dentary, grew larger. From taking up only about half of the jaw, the dentary of today's mammals has expanded until it forms a new jaw joint with the skull.
The teeth of mammals have also undergone significant changes in the course of evolution. Some 290 million years ago, the precursors of modern mammals had teeth that were all the same size and shape. Gradually, as hunting and eating habits diversified, teeth became more specialized, designed to process food before digestion can occur. The mammalian stomach is usually made of a single saclike organ, although among some mammals, such as ruminant artiodactyls and cetaceans, it is subdivided into chambers.

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