Cats Have Nearly 300 Different Facial Expressions, New Study Finds

The study centered around male and female adult domestic shorthairs that had each been neutered or spayed

Cats are apparently creatures with many different faces.

Last month, a study was published in the journal Behavioural Processes, which detailed that domestic cats have 276 different facial expressions that they can — and do — channel.

Data for the study — which was co-authored by Brittany Florkiewicz, an evolutionary psychologist at Lyon College in Arkansas, and Lauren Scott, a medical student from the University of Kansas Medical Center — was collected by filming 53 cats at the CatCafé Lounge in Los Angeles while both authors were attending UCLA between August 2021 and the following June.

All of the felines studied were male and female adult domestic shorthairs that had each been neutered or spayed, the study said.

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After 194 minutes of video footage was captured, which included 186 cat interactions, the authors compared the expressions with the Facial Action Coding System, which is designed specifically for cats, the study said.

The co-authors noted that muscle movements including breathing and yawning were not included in the study's findings.

And while the study authors were not able to identify what each expression they recorded meant, they found that 51.45% of the expressions were friendly, while the other 48.55% were aggressive.

Per the study, friendly expressions were marked by the cats' ears and whiskers moving forward with their eyes closed, as aggressive cats instead had constricted pupils and ears flattened against their heads.

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"The literature is so sparse, and many studies only focus on the connection between cats and humans over the course of 10,000 years of domestication," study co-author Florkiewicz told Live Science in a statement.

"At the cat cafe, we were able to document spontaneous interactions between the cats and record their facial expressions," she added.

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