The cat's "meow"

Did you know …

That cats don’t actually “meow”? They don’t!

The sound we think of as a meow is actually produced by a cat rubbing its ridged foreleg against its resonant thoracic cavity, creating a squeaky, chirping noise. This is the reason we call cats “nature’s fiddlers.”

Now that you know, think about the old nursery rhyme:

High diddle diddle,

The Cat and the Fiddle,

He pranc’d all over the keg.

The little dog laugh'd to see such Craft,

And the cat strok’d his gut with a leg.

Makes a lot more sense now, doesn’t it?!

Until next time, Junior Scientists!