Cats talk to each other with their faces
Cats are seen as poker-faced, but among themselves they have a subtle repertoire we’re only beginning to decode.
Takeaway
In a cat café, cats used different combinations of facial movements for friendly versus unfriendly encounters.
What the study did
- Two researchers observed 53 adult domestic shorthair cats at a cat café in Los Angeles.
- They used CatFACS, a coding system for cat facial muscle movements, to decode each expression.
- What set friendly and unfriendly expressions apart was which movements were combined – not how many.
- The authors suggest domestication may have enriched cats’ cat-to-cat facial ‘vocabulary’.
Limitations
One cat café, observational only; this summary is drawn from the abstract.
Citation
Scott L, Florkiewicz BN (2023). Feline faces: Unraveling the social function of domestic cat facial signals. Behavioural Processes. DOI: 10.1016/j.beproc.2023.104959
For general information only; it does not replace advice from your vet.
More studies
