The fact that you need to tell people not to intentionally give their cat salt water is telling of how far we've regressed as a society.
Humans are naturally curious and lean towards the scientific method, that's why we always need a disclaimer, don't TRY this, they still will.
“Scientific method”?
Most people’s “method” is YOLO/HMB for lols. Thank goodness cats have nine lives.
HMB? How many bombs?
'Hold my beer' I believe
trump entered the chat
Well, you know what they say about curiosity and cats...
Still, that's pretty impressive. Cats are absolutely incredible animals. I'm thankful the "worst behaved cats" still love me for whatever reason because I've been able to see some of the crazy shit they do.
My parents have an entirely blind 18 year old cat. She can navigate the entire house eats fine, plays a bit. Hops up and down furniture, finds the sunbathing spots, uses the litter just fine. You do have to keep an eye out for her if your moving around as she can't smell fast enough if you step in front of her path.
I'm trying to imagine the world from this cat's point of view. Relying on smells, sounds, touch and vibration. I bet she can hear and smell small critters just fine, but would she be able to successfully hunt them?
She can still hunt rabbits somehow.
Not that they let her. They just discovered this by accident. She's an indoor cat that roams their high fence backyard when they're out there.
please don’t go out of your way to give salt water to your cat
Advice to live by.
They say the same thing about horses because of their kidney to body size ratio but it's simply not true. It might help them survive on saltwater longer than a human would but it's still a death march.
Hey, look a feature every mammal may need to evolve in the near future!
Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop fucking cats.
When was the right week?
Same week they started or ideally the one before that? 🤷
I've been fucking the dog for decades.
Are oceans getting saltier? The glaciers that are melting are pure freshwater
EDIT
I'm not an expert but from a quick googling it seems the oceans are getting LESS salty
https://www.llnl.gov/article/37921/atmospheric-warming-altering-ocean-salinity-and-water-cycle
The issue is not more/less salt in the oceans, but fewer and less reliable sources of freshwater.
Oceans getting less salt
Rivers and lakes in Canada getting more salt
But I think they were referring to running out of reliable fresh water due to drought
Evolutionary household cats are damn near perfection.
Not a crab
Not a great white either. Basically unchanged for hundreds of millions of years and absolute apex in every way.
No longer apex. I can kill a Great White... With plastic rubbish!
Don’t cats often die from kidney disease? :(
Yes, but often as a result of a long diet with chronic dehydration from a kibble based diet.
The moisture cats consume is from their prey. The blood and juices of rodents and birds hydrate cats.
Canned/wet food cats tend to wind up with thyroid issues instead of kidney. (Well, sorta: there's evidence the BPAs in cans and mercury from fish as a reason for that.)
Well this is partially true. I'm pretty sure even a cat on a perfect diet will still have very high chances of developing chronic kidney disease in old age because it is just common in cats.
Could be wrong but my understanding is that It's partially because their kidneys are so efficient that they often get kidney disease in late age. They're always under a super high workload.
yep, usually the first organ to fail in old cats, so the superpower seems to come with a drawback. edit: removed inaccurate statements
Old age, in and of itself, doesn't kill any living thing. There's always a system failure eventually. Seems like in cats that's commonly kidneys or thyroid.
They can drink salt water when times are tough but it still wouldn't be good to drink it for a sustained amount of time.
Especially when kidneys are often the first part that craps out when they get old
I'm sorry, have you looked around recently?
Sort or related question, is that why their piss reeks like concentrated jenkem?
That’d be ammonia, a metabolic byproduct of their carnivorous diet.
Not trying to be that guy, but it's urea, which breaks down to ammonia due to microbial action once it's out of the cat. If a cat is pissing ammonia, it has big problems and needs to see a vet.
Other contributors to awful cat piss smell are mercaptans, the same compounds responsible for the scent of skunk spray, and pheromones and fatty acids released when the cat is spraying versus normal urination. It's all compounded by cats being adapted for arid environments so their urine is much more concentrated than human urine.
I love cats but they're gross little fuckers sometimes.
I could say that is an impressive evolutionary feat, but instead I'll say: Evolution, what the hell is wrong with you? You do know we all came from the sea, you should know 70% of the earth is covered in salt water, why did you think it was ok to devolve the ability to drink salt water but retain the requirement to drink water? Are you Ok? Do you need Jesus?
Evolution is considered a success if the animal lives long enough to successfully mate and nothing else matters to mindless evolution. At least cats don't have curly tusks that borrow through the skull if they live long enough like that infamous boar species I can't remember the name of.
kidney disease is one of the most common ways cats die of old age so super efficient kidneys dont come without a tradeoff. Cats have evolved to live in very arid enviorments where saltwater is all that is availible so the tradeoff might have been worth it. ability to drink saltwater only would work without kidneys being prematurely overstressed would be likely if animals had higher normal salt content but that would mean they would need a lot higher salt intake making living inland harder.
Mildly Interesting
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