Why Are Cats Tongues Rough?
Cats are cute from their head right down to their toes. And that features their cute little tongues as well.
Often, we only see cats tongues for a handful of reasons. Grooming themselves, drinking, and if you happen to cat is admittedly relaxed…sleeping.
So why do cats tongues feel so rough? Well they’re for a few reasons. First, is for grooming purposes. For cats, grooming is a full-time job—many cats spend as much as half of their waking hours grooming.
Grooming serves just a few purposes. When a cat “washes” their hair with their rough tongue, it helps remove dirt and loose hairs in addition to reducing odors. Those odors prey and predators to her presence for outdoor cats.
Grooming also helps cats comb healthy oils from their skin to their entire coat. Cats will groom one another as a way of bonding with one another.
Amazingly, grooming with a rough tongue also helps cats cool their bodies, which we are going to discuss more afterward.
>> You May Also Like: Why Does My Cat Lick Me?
What makes a cat’s tongue rough?
If you’ve got ever had your cat lick your face, you’ve got felt that their tongue isn’t like a dog’s tongue. As a substitute of slippery and soft, it is commonly rough. But what makes it rough?
Cat tongues of all breeds and species are covered with tiny curved things called spines. Spines are made up of little bits of hardened keratin. Keratin is a protein that’s present in hair, fingernails, and cat’s claws as well.
These tiny spines, also called papillae, have a shape and angle very just like a cat’s claws, with their spiny shape curved backward in order that they point toward the back of the cat’s mouth.
The spines move through a cat’s hair as they moves their head upward and pulls the tongue into their mouth. A lapping motion I’m sure all cat owners have seen. These keratin spines act as a comb and keep your cat’s coat looking clean and neat.
Not only used for brushing, these keratin formations also serve one other purpose aside from to make your cat look cute. These tiny spiny papillae are also used to shred meat and pick up food while eating.
So while they do act like a brush to your cat, a cat’s tongue can also be used to assist them hunt and eat their food once they were out within the wild.
Cat Tongues Are Also Air Conditioners
In case you remember from earlier, we mentioned that a cat’s tongue may also be used to assist cool them off.
Remarkably, when cats lick their fur, also they are cooling off their bodies. The spines on a cat’s tongue are hole and the space inside each spine wicks up saliva from a cat’s mouth as they groom.
The saliva wet’s their fur with their tongue every time they lick, and the water on the fur evaporates, cooling the surface of their fur coat. It’s literally like they’re giving themselves a shower. But as an alternative of using a towel to dry off, their water evaporates and cools off their winter coat.
Cats only sweat from hairless areas like their paw pads and chin, not from the remainder of their skin, so one of these evaporative cooling through grooming is a very vital way for cats to regulate their body temperature, especially with such thick and opulent fur coats.
Big Cats Have Spiny Tongues, Too
As I discussed earlier, cats of all breeds and species have this unique tongue structure. And that doesn’t just mean household cats.
The spines on the tongues of massive cats like lions, leopards, and tigers, are the identical size and shape because the spines on our little domestic cats’ tongues.
Fortunately, their larger tongues have lots more of those spines—handy since lions have lots more fur to cover with each grooming. The grooming behavior throughout the feline family looks almost equivalent.
