We know that cats have acute eyesight, able to see even in the dark, and have highly developed hearing Ears that they can move in all directions to capture sounds. They also have a very good sense of touch thanks to the vibrissae that are distributed in different parts of their body.
But taste is not their strong point. And the sense of smell had been a bit neglected until then, it has to be said that dogs held the prize! A new study has just shown this The anatomy of the cat’s nose was extremely complex and… very efficient. So they have quite the flair too! To understand all this, the researchers modeled the cat’s nose very closely and examined it.
A very sophisticated breathing air filter system
The cat has a labyrinth in this tiny nose with many branches and, above all: The inhaled air is divided into two, which is not the case with us, for example, People. One part takes a very fast path that takes it directly to the olfactory centers, for example to immediately detect the presence of a predator or danger, and the other part of the air takes time to be purified by the branches. Moisturized on the mucus and, above all, analyzed in detail to collect a lot of information about its environment before passing it into the lungs. Imagine all this happening… with every breath!
A very effective sense of smell in cats
We suspected that cats have a very good sense of smell, as they are sensitive to the slightest changes in their environment, mark their territory with their body odors and can also detect the presence of a fellow creature thanks to the tracks left behind. .
This double airflow makes the cat’s sense of smell very effective, 100 times more efficient than animals that don’t have this system.
This study also shows that chemistry labs could even take inspiration from cat anatomy, which is even more efficient than anything humans have been able to invent to date!
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