Why Can't My Cat Roar?

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I have a cat. Her name is Cameo, shes adorable, and recently she peed inside of a potted plant.

But can you imagine how amazing it would be if she could roarwhile peeing inside of a potted plant?

Shed be like, “give me some treatsand then like ferocious roar... it would be so cute!

But domestic cats cant roar. Only four species in the cat family can: lions, tigers, leopards, and jaguars.

Heres the weird thing, though: zoologists are pretty sure those four species of cats cant purr.

So even though my cat cant roar, the reason probably has a lot to do with the things in her throat that let her purr.

Now, we still arent - this is amazing - totally sure how cats purr. Theres no, like, “purr boxthat we can locate in a cat, and no ones ever stuck

a purring cat in an MRI to find out exactly whats happening. But weve known for a while that it probably involves the larynx, aka the voice box.

Back in 1834, a British zoologist named Richard Owen noticed that there was an anatomical difference between the cat species that purred and the ones that roared: roaring cats had

a more flexible hyoid. The hyoid is a structure that supports the tongue and larynx.

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