Just as some animals have been naturally fossilized, it’s possible for some animals to be naturally mummified. Thousands of years ago, that’s what happened to some cheetahs on the Arabian Peninsula: In 2022 and 2023, Ahmed Al-Boug — a wildlife biologist at the National Center for Wildlife in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia — and his colleagues…

Embed from Getty Images Julia Henning has a quiz that you can take to see how well you know your cat’s language: While often miscast as mysterious or hard to understand, cats are actually excellent communicators. In fact, in free-ranging cat colonies, physical fights are kept to a minimum through clever use of body posturing, scent exchange…

Laura Elin Pigott writes of what owning a cat does to your brain (and theirs): Cats may have a reputation for independence, but emerging research suggests we share a unique connection with them – fuelled by brain chemistry. The main chemical involved is oxytocin, often called the love hormone. It’s the same neurochemical that surges…

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Embed from Getty Images Cats can identify owners from strangers by scent: The study by Tokyo University of Agriculture found cats spent significantly longer sniffing tubes containing the odours of unknown people compared to tubes containing their owner’s smell. This suggests cats can discriminate between familiar and unfamiliar humans based on their odour, the researchers…

Embed from Getty Images Two new studies identify the genetics behind orange house cats: Now two papers, published concurrently on Thursday in Current Biology,reveal a remarkably unique genetic pathway that has never been seen in other felines—or any other mammals. With their colleagues, two separate groups at Stanford University and Kyushu University in Japan independently arrived at the same surprising…

See Michelle Starr, Study Reveals a Simple Technique to Communicate With Your Cat, Science Alert, May 6, 2025.

As was earlier completed with dogs’ data, scientists are now building a vast database of cats’ genetic information: Cat owners are being asked share their pet’s quirky traits and even post researchers their fur in an effort to shed light on how cats’ health and behaviour are influenced by their genetics. The scientists behind the…