Thursday in Whitewater will see scattered showers with a high of 53. Sunrise is 6:05 and sunset 7:41 for 13h 35m 58s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 75.4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM.
Embed from Getty Images Nicola Davis reports Big cats can tell apart known and unknown human voices, study finds (‘Tigers, cheetahs and snow leopards, like domesticated cats, respond differently to familiar and unfamiliar voices’): From tigers to cheetahs, big cats may seem majestically aloof but researchers have found they can tell apart familiar and unfamiliar…
??Justine McDaniel reports Taters the cat stars in NASA’s first video streamed from deep space: On the path to Mars, nearly 19 million miles from Earth, Taters the cat got his big break. The orange tabby starred in the first video streamed from deep space, a successful NASA experiment that marked a milestone for advancing…
Saturday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of 44. Sunrise is 7:19 and sunset 4:22 for 9h 02m 28s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 16.2% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1773, members of the Sons of Liberty disguised as Mohawk Indians hold a Boston Tea Party when they dump hundreds of crates of tea into Boston harbor as a protest against the Tea Act.
according to a new study, many cats share a trait more frequently associated with pet dogs: They play fetch.
The peer-reviewed study, published Thursday, dispels any lingering myth that cats do not know how to retrieve objects for their owners, said its authors, who based their findings on a survey of the owners of 1,154 cats that played fetch on every continent except Antarctica. Some cats can and do play fetch, they found, although it depended on the feline’s individual traits and the bond shared with its owner.
“It was more common than people were probably expecting, and even I was expecting,” Jemma Forman, an animal psychologist at the University of Sussex and an author of the study, said in an interview. The authors of the study, published in the Scientific Reports journal, said they believe it is the most extensive conducted to date on this specific behavior among cats.
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The study, limited to cats whose owners already reported fetching, did not assess how prevalent the behavior was among the general cat population. While many cats do fetch, Forman suggested that more research was needed to determine how common it was more generally. A cat’s breed was not a barrier to its ability to fetch, the study found, although Siamese cats were particularly well represented in the sample.
Embed from Getty Images In Scientific American, Jack Tamisiea writes that Cats Kill a Staggering Number of Species across the World (‘Domestic cats are cherished human companions, but a new study shows the enormous breadth of species the felines prey on when they are left to roam freely’): Despite their small stature and memeable mugs,…
See Think cats are aloof? They make nearly 300 facial expressions, study says: Brittany Florkiewicz has always been a dog person, but she was surprised by what she discovered when reviewing more than 100 hours of cat videos. Florkiewicz, a psychology professor at an Arkansas college, spent her childhood running around her yard with her…
Good morning. Friday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 82. Sunrise is 6:20 AM and sunset 7:28 PM for 13h 08m 37s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 96.3% of its visible disk illuminated. On this day in 1939, J. Robert Oppenheimer and his student Hartland Snyder publish the…
At Virginia Tech, there’s a study on the benefits of taking shelter cats for a stroll now and again. Marjorielee Christianson writes that Over 3 million cats enter shelters in the United States each year, according to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Julianna Scardina, a member of the Virginia-Maryland College of…
Good morning. Monday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 81. Sunrise is 5:45 AM and sunset 8:16 PM for 14h 30m 26s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 97.4% of its visible disk illuminated. On this day in 1777, the Second Continental Congress passes a resolution that the…
Embed from Getty Images Hannah Keyser writes How Do Cats Cool Themselves Off? (‘Here’s a hint: It’s not by sweating through their paws’): Conduction allows cats to cool themselves off or warm themselves up via contact with objects of a different temperature. This is why you can often find your cat seeking out cool kitchen…
Tanya Lewis writes Cat Noses Contain Twisted Labyrinths That Help Them Separate Smells (‘Scientists hypothesize that coiled channels inside a cat’s nose may function like a gas chromatograph’): Researchers created a computational model of a cat’s nose based on computed tomography scans and tissue slices from a deceased house cat whose body was donated for…
Good morning. Saturday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 72. Sunrise is 5:33 AM and sunset 8:09 PM for 14h 35m 47s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 38.9% of its visible disk illuminated. On this day in 1862, the USS Planter, a steamer and gunship, steals through Confederate lines…
Embed from Getty Images Rachael Funnell writes This Is The Best Way to Get A Cat’s Attention According to Science: With the help of 18 domestic cats (8 females, 10 males) with a job history of at least three years in a cat café, experimenters tried four different approaches to getting a cat’s attention:…
For years, scientists have wondered if striped cats on Corsica were a distinct species: Turns out, they are: The elusive striped “cat-fox” familiar mostly to Corsican shepherds and as a source of intrigue to scientists, is indeed its own species specific to the French Mediterranean island, the French office for Biodiversity (OFB) announced Thursday. New…
