Transcripts

Leslie Lyons:
Whether it's a tiger or whether it's a little house cat they still mark the house the same way, they'll use their claws the same way, they roll over in the sun, how they interact with one another is also very similar. So your house cat is like having a little wild individual in your own home.

Leslie Lyons, Associate Professor in the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of California at Davis, is featured on the National Geographic channel's explorer program called Science of Cats, which debuts Tuesday June 10th.

Well I think really to stand back and look at a cat, one realizes what a nearly perfect animal this is. They have a wonderful sense of hearing, actually at higher ranges than dogs do. Their sense of smell is also very keen but they also have a very keen sense of eyesight. So they have a very excellent balance of all their senses.

And here's something interesting to remember; the next time you see a brown cat…

That cat is not brown at all. If you actually pull out some of the cat's fur, the fur is banded black, yellow, black. And so all of the cats you look out there and see that are brown - they really don't have brown pigment at all, they're an optical illusion.

At somethingyoushouldknow.net I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.