Any pet lover knows that it comes as no surprise to discover that dogs aren't quite as graceful as their feline friends, the cat. While a kitten will take a hundred little sips to lap up a saucer of milk, a puppy will likely splatter the milk all over the floor before drooling out half of the contents - and we love them for that. But while you may chalk up the messy behavior to a carefree disposition or a hasty nature, behavioral ethologists who study the exquisite techniques of getting a drink have recently discovered that cats and dogs have distinct strategies of their own. And each one benefits the species in its own unique way.
Discussed Tuesday morning, Nov. 25, at the American Physical Society's Division of Fluid Dynamics Meeting held in San Francisco, California, researchers from Virginia Tech University who've researched the drinking habits of pets for a while now say that their findings reveal why larger, hefty dogs create a larger backsplash than their smaller counterparts. And it's a strategy that relates both to the species' origins and physiological limitations.
"Three years ago, we studied how cats drink, and I was [always] curious about how dogs drink, because cats and dogs are everywhere" researcher for the study, Sunny Jung says. "When we started this project, we thought that dogs drink similarly to cats. But it turns out that it's different, because dogs smash their tongues on the water surface - they make lots of splashing - but a cat never does that."
The original feline study found that cats drink via a two-part process, wherein an elegant plunge and pull strategy is used, and a cat is able to gently draw water into its retracting tongues by place its tongue along the water's surface and retracting it quickly. But when assessing the dogs in the same way, Jung and his colleagues discovered that the ladle-like tongue of canines fills with water and retracts at an acceleration roughly five times faster than that of gravity - both of which contribute greatly to the splish-splashing we've come to know.
Unlike humans, who employ a method of suction by using our cheeks to create negative pressure to drive a column of water up a straw, carnivores like canines and felines are not so luckily equipped with complete cheeks. Which can create a few problems when it comes to fully closing their lips and creating suction. However, lacking complete cheeks is a great adaptation that allows these carnivores to open their mouths wide enough to consume prey, and the less than cheeky species have found other ways of bringing vital water into their mouths.
And while you may not believe that lapping up a mouthful of water is an efficient means of drinking, the researchers have shown that the evolutionarily-derived traits of drinking found in felines and canines benefit the species in an unexpectedly effective way.
