Dog tongue – smooth. Cat tongue – sandpaper.
Dogs and cats do the same things with their tongues. Is there an evolutionary reason for the difference in texture?
Or would a dog’s tongue be sandpapery if it was as small as a cat’s tongue? Does size matter here?
Dogs and cats don’t do the same things with their tongues. Cats use them for grooming way more than dogs. That’s why cat tongues are rougher - they’re like a little hairbrush.
True. Dogs don’t lick their bodies that much, do they? (Except for their genitals, of course.)
No cite, but I think I read somewhere that the wolf ancestors of dogs used their teeth to rip meat off the bones, while the big cats used their rough tongues to do the same.
Big cats (lions, etc.) will use their rough tongues to scrape meat off of bones. I’ve never given my cat a meaty bone to see if she does the same, but she does pick up pieces of beef jerky with her tongue, rather than her jaws. Dogs, on the other hand, use their teeth to gnaw bits of meat off.
Did you know cats drink “backwards”? Dogs (and people, if you watch) will lap at a bowl of water by curling their tongues forward toward their noses. Cats curl them backwards, toward their chins. I have no idea if the hooks on the tongue help to gather more water when you drink backwards or not, but it might.
Also, tongues aren’t the only hooked part of a cat’s anatomy. The penis also has hooks. I have no idea if the two are related.
Aw, shoot. Sorry, KlondikeGeoff, I didn’t mean to repeat your post. I swear the hamsters took over two minutes to post that post, and yours wasn’t there when I previewed.
Like velcro?
The barbs on a tom’s penis are there to stimulate ovulation in the female when the male withdraws. The female requires this stimulation, as she can’t ovulate without it.
Of course, it’s not as if anyone’s ever asked for HER opinion on the whole thing…
Anybody who’s heard the finalé of cats mating knows her opinion. It seems to hurt.
Right, sorry again. By “related” I meant more along the lines of “I have no idea if the genes are linked, perhaps so closely on the DNA strand that the tongue grows barbs because the penis requires them, or something of that nature.” Unless cats do cunnilingus, I wasn’t trying to say that the tongue was barbed for the same practical reason the penis is!
“Why” questions about nature are always sticky. Sometimes things are the way they are simply because something else needs to be the way it is. (See: male nipples. Sure, men don’t need 'em, but women do, so men have them.)
They sure are.
Like if cats’ tongues weren’t so conveniently rough, would something else change in cat biology to accommodate that? If they were stinky, dirty animals – not so likely to be domesticated?
I’m just meandering, but it is curious, why and how this kind of stuff happens.
I doubt it. The presence of penis barbs is a secondary sex characteristic that requires the presence of testosterone – immature males don’t have them, and if a tom is neutered they’ll go away.
Of course. He doesn’t call-he hasn’t written…
Dogs cool them selve with their tounges. I doubt cats tongues do this.