Hi people! 🙂
Do you have any weird animal facts you can share with us?
My answer:
I am certainly not a wealth of knowledge about animals and don’t know how weird this is going to be for people, but recently, in the Polish cat literature anthology I’ve read that I’ve been mentioning a lot, there was a piece about how allegedly all cats sometimes make a sort of half-meow, as if they were about to meow but change their mind in the last second. Apparently the desired effect of it is immediate –
it results in total melting of the human heart. – I found that very interesting because, while obviously I can only hear when Misha’s meowing but can’t see when he’s about to meow but doesn’t actually do it, somehow it seemed questionable to me whether it’s indeed “all” cats who do it, I’ve never heard my family talk about Misha doing things like this, and he really does have a very wide and rich repertoire of manipulative strategies. I asked my Mum the next day and she said no, Misha doesn’t do it, unless involuntarily, like when he’ll yawn at the same time when he wants to meow or he’s been asleep for so long that his larynx has to relearn how to work properly and what it’s actually supposed to do, it’s very funny when Misha is so sleepy and can’t speak yet, or sometimes Misha will meow and sneeze at the same time and that’s really cute. But he never seems to do such things voluntarily and I really don’t get why would this be so particularly heart-melting and neither does my Mum, I mean everything about Misha is cute but I don’t know why this meowing but not meowing would be supposed to be more than anything else. Perhaps he spent too little time with his birth mummy –
Hansa Luft (yep, that’s apparently her name) – and she didn’t have enough time to teach him such sophisticated details, and now Misha has literally no contact with other cats as he seems not to like it at all so he has no way of obtaining such knowledge. So yeah, that’s my weird fact about my apparently weird Misha.
How about you? 🙂
My Inner MishMash 
Huh. Sonya thinks cats only talk when they need something from their people. I’m more a believer that they like to express themselves, and communicate, and that sort of thing! I wish Mr. Kitty would meow more often! It’s a rare thing with him!!
Yeah, I have some wild animal facts! YAY! Okay, what color is polar bears’ fur? White? NO! It’s clear. Their furs are clear and give the long-distance appearance of whiteness.
Flamingoes are pink because of their diet! Whatever they eat turns them pink!
LuLu, a Newfoundland, has a third eyelid that looks like an injury, but it’s common for it to protrude in her breed. Options are limited. I could pay over $100 for it to be put back into her eye, but it could quite readily just pop back out. Also, I can’t have it surgically removed without cursing her to a life of chronic dry eye. Mostly, her eye waters all the time, so I’m in the habit of wiping off the gunk and the tears every time I see her. I don’t mind!
Springers have that springer rage disorder due to breeders who prioritize appearance (tricolored, green eyes, etc.) over personality and temperament. This is heartbreaking. I don’t think it was a problem when my family first had spaniels before I was born. It’s more of a recent development, from what I understand.
Fun question!!
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Wow, these are all very interesting facts!
I am sure cats have many more reasons to talk than just communicating their needs to people, they’re even more vocal with each other sometimes! My Misha talks very little beyond the necessities as well, but even he sometimes feels like expressing some deeper feelings than just hunger and talks more when he’s particularly happy, but I’d also like him to talk more, he does way too little for my liking and it’s so pleasant to hear him.
Oh poor Lulu, that’s not fun. Misha has some eye problems too but with his tear ducts, so he’s also tearing up a lot. Sometimes to the point that his cheeks are wet and it looks as if he was crying. But I prefer not to wipe his eyes as I’m afraid it could cause him even more discomfort and pain so I prefer Mum or Sofi to do it safely. I guess it’s often quite counter-productive to correct surgically such genetic issues, not always, of course, but often, because they like to come back anyway.
This is seriously so sad about spaniels! Sucks that the breeders are so overzealous in their job.
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Guinea pigs have excellent hearing, and they learn which sounds are related to which types of food. They have a noise that’s only for telling humans to feed them. It’s a high-pitched wheek wheek sound. The ones I have now rarely do it because Peanut prefers to chew on the cage bars instead, and the others, including the girls in the other room, have decided that Peanut’s chewing is insistent enough that they don’t need to wheek.
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Oh, how cool that they can be so communicative! And that they even recognise different types of food! 🙂
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Yeah, it’s pretty amazing. The girls get excited about the crinkle of the hay bag, but aren’t that interested in the crinkle of the food pellets bag. The boys are the opposite. If I happen to bump into the treat bag, everyone goes wild. The most exciting, though, is the opening of the crisper drawer in the fridge and the crinkling of the plastic bag the celery is in.
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So fun! Yeah, the magical drawers… Misha has one too, where I keep his snacks, and I keep them with some other of my own things, and sometimes when I open it when he’s around and move his snacks accidentally to get something out he’s all wild too. 😀
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They’re such wonderful little friends!
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🙂
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My cat doesn’t purr and he only meows when he wants a treat as far as I know. I used to have a dog that could speak or sneeze on command and he knew the difference between the two.
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My Misha doesn’t purr a lot either. I mean he does, but it’s really really quiet and you have to have a lot of good will to even hear it, it’s more palpable than audible, sometimes it may be a bit louder but generally it’s super quiet and so a lot of people who meet him, and also some people in my family, think he can’t purr at all. I think he is more of a selfish purrer, nothing wrong with that, so that he uses his purring mainly for self-soothing as he’s very anxious, rather than as a way of telling people how great he’s feeling with them.
Wow, your dog sounds super smart!
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My mother in law taught him by bopping him in the nose and giving him a treat after he sneezed. Eventually he learned the word. Ha ha
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😀
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Cat waste can change the ph in planted flowers and change the color of whatever you planted. I kid you not. I had a yellow rose bush but six months of fresh cat fertilizer turned my roses hot pink.
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Huh, now I feel like experimenting! 😀 Never heard of this. Sounds very interesting!
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Ooh!
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