Meow! Amazing stuff! How did they figure this out!
"... What’s more, the team found, we humans might be to thank: Our feline friends may have evolved this range of sneers, smiles, and grimaces over the course of their 10,000-year history with us. ...
... discovered a total of 276 distinct facial expressions made toward other cats—not so far removed from the 357 produced by chimpanzees, ... and well more than many had thought cats capable of. Each expression combined about four of 26 unique facial movements, including parted lips, jaw drops, dilated or constricted pupils, blinks and half blinks, pulled lip corners, nose licks, protracted or retracted whiskers, and/or various ear positions. By comparison, humans have 44 unique facial movements, although researchers are still working out how many different expressions they combine into ... Dogs have 27 facial movements, but again, their total number of expressions isn’t known. ..."
From August to June, ... video recorded 194 minutes of cats’ facial expressions, specifically those aimed at other cats, after the café had closed for the day. Then ... coded all their facial muscle movements—excluding any related to breathing, chewing, yawning, and the like.
From the abstract:
"Lately, there has been a growing interest in studying domestic cat facial signals, but most of this research has centered on signals produced during human-cat interactions or pain. The available research on intraspecific facial signaling with domesticated cats has largely focused on non-affiliative social interactions. However, the transition to intraspecific sociality through domestication could have resulted in a greater reliance on affiliative facial signals that aid with social bonding. Our study aimed to document the various facial signals that cats produce during affiliative and non-affiliative intraspecific interactions. Given the close relationship between the physical form and social function of mammalian facial signals, we predicted that affiliative and non-affiliative facial signals would have noticeable differences in their physical morphology. We observed the behavior of 53 adult domestic shorthair cats at CatCafé Lounge in Los Angeles, CA. Using Facial Action Coding Systems designed for cats, we compared the complexity and compositionality of facial signals produced in affiliative and non-affiliative contexts. To measure complexity and compositionality, we examined the number and types of facial muscle movements (AUs) observed in each signal. We found that compositionality, rather than complexity, was significantly associated with the social function of intraspecific facial signals. Our findings indicate that domestication likely had a significant impact on the development of intraspecific facial signaling repertoires in cats."
Feline Faces: Unraveling the Social Function of Domestic Cat Facial Signals (no public access)
This was the laboratory for this research!
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