(CNN) -- While dogs slurp to alleviate thirst, cats display a mastery of physical dynamics that leaves their whiskers, chin and the counter top free of liquid, scientists found.
Researchers spent hours watching a feline consume liquids in order to understand the forces. They also made a robotic version of a cat's tongue and watched YouTube videos of big cats drinking.
Using complicated formulas, the four-member team from Virginia Tech, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Princeton University came up with their findings, detailed Thursday in the online journal Science.
Here's how a house cat, which averages about four laps her second, personifies daintiness while drinking.
Cats extend their tongues straight down with the tip curled backward like a capital "J" to form a ladle, so that the top surface of the tongue touches the liquid first.
"The speed of the tongue is quite incredible," co-author Pedro M. Reis, an assistant engineering professor at MIT, told CNN.
"The smooth tip of the tongue barely brushes the surface of the liquid before the cat rapidly draws its tongue back up," said the researchers, who had no funding for the study. "As it does so, a column of milk forms between the moving tongue and the liquid's surface. The cat then closes its mouth, pinching off the top of the column for a nice drink, while keeping its chin dry".
That column, they say, is a balance between gravity, which pulls the milk back toward the bowl, and inertia, which refers to the tendency of a liquid to continue moving in a direction unless another force interferes.
Kitty knows how quickly to lap in order to balance these forces, the study found.
CNN
