Study: Cats have 300 expressions
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 family’s German shepherds and Labrador retrievers.
She and a co-researcher began studying cats in 2021 to learn more about how they communicate and express themselves. After videotaping and reviewing felines’ facial expressions for nearly a year, Florkiewicz debunked her lifelong belief dogs are friendlier.
The researchers found cats displayed at least 276 facial expressions, according to the study’s results, which published last month in the journal Behavioural Processes. Florkiewicz said the findings show cats are more articulate and affectionate than previously thought.
As someone who “fell prey to the stereotype of, ‘Oh, cats are aloof; they don’t really express themselves as much as dogs,’ the study was very enlightening,” said Florkiewicz, who teaches at Lyon College in Batesville, Ark.
Florkiewicz and co-researcher Lauren Scott were studying anthropology at UCLA in 2020 when they decided to research cats. Florkiewicz had been analyzing facial expressions in chimpanzees and other primates.
About once a week starting in August 2021, Florkiewicz and Scott filmed cats for a few hours at the CatCafe Lounge in Los Angeles. By June 2022, the two had recorded 150 hours of interactions. Over the next four months, Florkiewicz and Scott documented the cats’ facial expressions.
They studied how the cats moved their ears, wrinkled their noses, parted their lips and licked their faces.
They labeled each face either a friendly or an unfriendly expression. When cats were happy or having fun, they typically moved their ears and whiskers forward and outward, and sometimes closed their eyes.
Cats tended to make what were labeled as friendly expressions when they were grooming each other, resting next to one another, sniffing each other and rolling around and playing together.
When cats felt threatened or unhappy with another cat, they typically moved their ears backward and flattened them, licked their lips and constricted their pupils.
Cats usually displayed those faces when biting, fleeing, growling, hissing, scratching, spitting, staring and swatting at each other.
Of the 276 facial expressions, researchers found about 46% were friendly, nearly 37% were aggressive and roughly 17% were ambiguous. Cats opening their mouths, dropping their jaws, wrinkling their noses and blinking were behaviors seen in both friendly and aggressive faces.