Naked Science Forum

Life Sciences => Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution => Topic started by: Karen W. on 19/11/2008 18:42:00

Title: Why is a dog's tongue smooth and a cat's tongue rough?
Post by: Karen W. on 19/11/2008 18:42:00
I was talking to a friend a week or so ago and the subject was brought up.. All the cats I have had have always had rough tongue's in comparison to my dogs.. whose tongue's seems smooth and soft.

Why is that?
Do they serve different purpose or do they have a different taste bud set up on their tongues?
Title: Re: Why is a dog's tongue smooth and a cat's tongue rough?
Post by: AllenG on 19/11/2008 20:34:05
A cat's tongue has papillae (small tooth like spines) to help it remove flesh from its prey.
A dog chews its food into larger chunks which it swallows whole.
Title: Re: Why is a dog's tongue smooth and a cat's tongue rough?
Post by: AllenG on 20/11/2008 00:35:54
I couldn't add this earlier, there was a database glitch.

I've heard that a dog can taste sweet, where a cat cannot.  I don't know if that is accurate.
Title: Re: Why is a dog's tongue smooth and a cat's tongue rough?
Post by: Karen W. on 21/11/2008 14:49:47
Thats very interesting.. Thanks Allen.. I know that they love chocolate but It is dangerous and can kill them.. I wonder if its the sweetness that attracts them or the cocoa bean itself....?
Title: Re: Why is a dog's tongue smooth and a cat's tongue rough?
Post by: SquarishTriangle on 22/11/2008 03:21:22
I've heard that a dog can taste sweet, where a cat cannot.  I don't know if that is accurate.

Interesting, and apparently true! But that does raise the question of why we use a paste that smells and, as I've been told by a friend, tastes like caramel to encourage cats to swallow pills.
Title: Re: Why is a dog's tongue smooth and a cat's tongue rough?
Post by: nicephotog on 23/11/2008 12:40:38
Say What bros..!!!!! as a Canis Lupus keeper/owner....(tougue?????)....
Canis Lupus tongue IS... A MEAT "RASP"!!! full stop.
Canis Familiaris is a purrelant fat obese lazy slob of a degenerate evolutionary.... e.t.c.
Run your hand over Lupus tongue and feel the difference also.
As an extra, tell me what you find of Foxes(Vulpes Vulpes) tongues ,
i seriously want to know that since it(apparently contains a quantity of the Felis Clade.)
http://www.nicephotog-jsp.net/Dingone.pdf
Karen W: ..."but It is dangerous and can kill them"...
Dingos and other Lupus eat Berries(Omnivorous) and go fishing in both streams and Ocean.
Title: Re: Why is a dog's tongue smooth and a cat's tongue rough?
Post by: Karen W. on 23/11/2008 21:25:30
What do the berries have to do with chocolate?

My dog loves blackberries etc.. but likes chocolate also.. I will buy him a fake chocolate treat.. on rare occasion but no real chocolate.. I had a Boston Terrier who pulled a bag of chocolate chips out of a cupboard and ate them and got very sick.. we had a couple incidents with him stealing the kids chocolate also.. but at one point was hospitalized because it nearly killed him!


What is your point about berries and war dogs in the article?
Title: Re: Why is a dog's tongue smooth and a cat's tongue rough?
Post by: nicephotog on 24/11/2008 05:07:23
Firstly, to clarify, only dog and cat that sat on the mat are defined here.

To have a thought about their tongues being different and their taste will
require expanding the difference between domestic dogs and wild dogs
also again to reintroduce the point of cats either giant or so-called domestic
(the small one).

Going back to cats, their principle whether large or small is designed as a
carnivore that obtains by hunting all the way to the purest level of living its
life, that being instinctive as a carnivorous hunter.
That problem of so-called domestic cats in keeping them is documented as
being a trouble to wildlife for owners and understood to be a requirement for
freshly killed meat in completest of scientific nutritional terms. It indicates
they nutritionally require to hunt.

Similarly wild dogs get no choice either but show a greater omnivorousness
as also domestic dogs show.
Wild dogs eat berries, in Australia they often eat the small yellow or red
variety of sparse shrub level treelike berry bus that grows wild. Tree-like
fruits as such I presume from knowledge of most of them at a more human
consumptive experience at cross reference tend to contain sugars unlike
internal earth grown fruits or vegetables.
Domestic dogs often chew grass stems.
I can't say that cats cannot eat vegetables but I have never seen them actually
do anything the alike.

There is a clear difference between domestic dogs and wild dogs both
intellectually and instinctively.
I put to any animal that has a wolfs IQ that will be the trouble with keeping it.
Wild dogs require to be the best or they cannot survive.
Canis Familiaris(Domestic dogs) tends to be an animal walking on the crutches
of humanity not an ecologically sound creature.

Wild dogs also lean toward cats behavior instinctively by their reactivity.
The problem both wild dog types (Canis Lupus [Wolves],
Canis Latrans[Coyote] and Vulpes [Foxes]) and cats have of being extreme as
deliberate carnivores and hunters is requiring every last piece of meat and
cartlidge obtainable.
AllenG: ...A dog chews its food into larger chunks which it swallows whole...
Boriphagin extinct 50-10 million years back had 4 less molars and were considered bone crushers against modern Canis variety eating methods.
But Wolves are recognisable from the affectionate lick they will give you as tearing across your skin because the rasp system is for that very purpose of meat removal though they effectively also eat every part of the animal fur or feathers and bones.

The first definable fossil of a dog type was Tomarctus, and it is interesting to
note that its name means “all but a Bear”.Another berry eater and meat eater.
I wonder what its tongue is like too.