Wednesday, December 9, 2009

An Interesting Thing That I Had Not Known

Taking a quick break from hockey trophies here. Anyway, up until yesterday, I had lived my life in blissful ignorance of the reason why cats, when frightened or startled, will flatten their ears, spit, and hiss. Like so:



Well, this behaviour is apparently a form of mimicry. When a cat hisses, it is saying, quite deliberately, "oh no, I'm not a poor little cat at all! I'm actually one of these guys:



...so I'm really much scarier than a cat, and you should leave me alone."

Ok, perhaps they're not mimicking the Armenian Viper specifically, but you get the idea.

Fez tip to Maru.

2 comments:

Annie's Mom said...

HM! Fascinating...

I'm trying to picture any of the cats of our acquaintance as vipers, and my instinct is to fall off my chair laughing.

Crimson Rambler said...

we could have gone straight to the Armenian Vipers at the Humane Society, and eliminated the middleman. Or middlecat. Hum.