Some people think that cats are inscrutable, and keep a straight face all the time. Cat owners know better, and so do the millions of people who love seeing LOLcats on the internet. A new science paper reveals that cats can and do wear their feelings on their face when they feel the need to. In fact, they documented 276 distinct facial expressions!
The research sounds like a lot of fun. Lauren Scott and Brittany Florkiewicz observed domestic cats at a cat cafe in Los Angeles for a year. They videotaped interactions the cats had with each other and with people, then analyzed the video footage. They tracked the cats' facial expressions with a scale they call the Cat Facial Action Coding System. Of the 276 different facial expressions, they deemed 45.7% friendly and 37% aggressive. Other expressions could be fearful, judgmental, disgusted, or surprised, or even something else. The researchers were not able to ascribe meaning to every expression, but cats understand them. Read more about this research at CNN. -via Fark, where you'll find plenty of examples.
(Image credit: Marcus Holland-Moritz)