A woman in a bar was telling me that cats are classified by two creieria:
1)Whether they roar or purr. Which doesn’t make sense to me because I though all cats purred. I thought maybe she was referring to roar(lions, tigers) vs screech/meow(pumas, housecats).
2)Whether they lay down(lions) or crouch(housecats) when they eat.
Any truth to this?
Er… did she say what these “Classifications” were? “Classified” into what? IF a tiger and a Siamese both purr and crouch, does that make them the same species?
Incidentally, no, not all felines purr. Panthera genus animals (lions, tigers, panthers, and leopards) don’t purr the same way other cats do.
Sounds like an old wives tale to me. We have four cats. They all stand while they eat. They all purr, too – purring is instinctive in cats. Some purr louder than others, mind you; one of our cats has a very audible purr, while another is very quiet.
Besides, what are the categories under which she is claiming they are “classified?”
Addendum: Per RickJay’s clarification, by “cats” I mean “domesicated felines” as opposed to the larger, wilder variety.
Modern cladistic classification will use genetic closeness to classify any group of organisms, and that classification is independent of behavior since it is based on DNA analysis. Where the DNA data is ambiguous, other differences may be used-- eg, morphological differences. This article on cats (Felidae) gives a good overview, but it’s about 10 yerars old, so there might be some new info out there. If so, I’m sure **Colibri **can point us in the right direction when he shows up.
Cats lying down is a defensive attack posture, it allows them to use their back claws in their attack, which is a very powerful attack. Housecats that eat '‘dead, store bought food’ have no reason to assume this posture, but when they do make a kill, even a large bug, I have seen them do the lay down thing while they start to eat, they usually get up and eat in the crouch position when the chance for prey retaliation is over, or to carry their prise.
In that case, all domestic cats are of the same species-- Felis sylvestris– same as their wild relative (Wild cat). Often called F. sylvestris catus, it is most closely realted to the subspecis F. silvestris lybica (African wild cat). Different breeders might choose to classify the cats in som manner that is relavent for them (short hair vs long hair), but they’re all one species.
Back to the OP’s Q #1, I’ve also read in a couple of places (can’t recall where now) that cats that roar don’t purr, and vice versa.
Next time you are in a zoo, crawl into the lions’ den, scritch one behind the ears and see if it purrs. That should settle it.
I don’t see why you would doubt anything some woman in a bar told you. 
Be sure that you can tell the difference between purring and growling before you go scritching any lions behind the ears 
Around my house, as hazardous material.
That was a most interesting list, John; thanks! Do you have any understanding of (1) why there was such a major (sometimes re-) erecting of different genera in place of what were species of Felis, and (2) how much of a consensus view among ailurologists that taxonomy is?
I believe you but I’m having a hard time picturing how a cat can better use its hind legs to strike while laying down. Is it to protect from the front against the prey that they are currently eating, or to protect against the rear from the prey’s buddies; or do they do it kangaroo/ostrich style.
Someone once told me that declawing an outside cat is OK because they only use their back claws in a fight, which I also had a hard time picturing. As far a housecats go, I’ve never been scratched by back claws unless I was doing one of those ‘see if I can touch your stomach and remove my hand before you claw it’ games.
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I don’t know exactly whay she meant by classification. I think she was talking about species.
Basically yes, according to her.
I can’t claim to be completely up-to-date on felid classification, and since most of the on-line info doesn’t give much in the way of references it’s hard to be sure which are most authoritative.
Here’s one classification:
Subfamily Felinae
Subfamily Patherinae
This one is unusual in including the Cheetah in the Felinae instead of in its own subfamily.
Here’s another that continues to recognize the Cheetah as a separate subfamily.
With respect to the OP, “cats that roar” are in fact a natural grouping, that is, the genus Panthera, including the lion, tiger, leopard, and jaguar. However, “cats that purr” (or, better, “non-roaring cats”) is not a natural grouping. Some non-roaring cats are more closely related to roaring cats than they are to other non-roaring cats; therefore one cannot say this criterion is used in classifying cats.
As for the laying/crouching distinction, I doubt whether this has any validity at all. If there is any difference in tendency to do this, it is likely based on the size of the animal (a crouching stance perhaps being more difficult to maintain by a larger animal) than by actual relatedness.
I don’t think she’s going to be getting this published in any of the more reputable taxonomic journals anytime soon. 
There are no objective criteria for the recognition of genera; basically a genus is whatever a taxonomist says it is. Because the small cats are pretty homogeneous morphologically, and were not easy to separate clearly on that basis, the tendency was previously to put them in the same genus. However, now that genetic data is available, it has become possible to identifiy different lineages within the group, so that a genus can be recognized for each lineage.
Genetic data however can cut both ways. While in many cases it can lead to splitting of genera, in others it can lead to lumping of previously separate genera when they are found to be more closely related than previously supposed.
As for the second question, I don’t know what the consensus is in detail; but the tendency these days is certainly to split up Felis into several genera.
AFAIK, there’s 2 types of cats: big and small. Big cats are usually bigger than small cats, but not always. Some big cats are smaller than some small cats. So if size is not totally indicative of which category a cat fits into , how do you tell? Well, there’s a bunch of things to look for (e.g., small cats have a furless area on the bridge of their nose that big cats lack) but the easy thing to look for is the eyes. Small cats have , well, “cat’s eyes”, those weird “vertical slit” pupils that freak people out. Big cats have round pupils, like humans.
As has already been noted, there is no clear distinction between “big cats” and “small cats” as groups, except that the biggest cats, lion, tiger, leopard, and jaguar, belong to the same genus (Panthera) and are a natural group. “Small cats” are not a natural group.
Offhand, I don’t know whether any small cats have round pupils, but even if they all had slit pupils it wouldn’t make them a natural group. In any case, I would like to see a cite for this distinction.