Anatomical Peculiarities of the Vocal Tract in Felids

Abstract

The fourty species (Wilson and Reeder 2005) of felids (family Felidae) are all strictly carnivorous and perfectly designed to capture live prey. The family is divided into two subfamilies, i.e., the Felinae and the Pantherinae (Wilson and Reeder 2005). The majority of adult felids live and hunt separately (Sunquist and Sunquist 2002). Besides other morphological adaptations to hunting (e.g., structure of the vertebral column or the limbs) cats possess a foreshortened face, powerful jaw muscles, strong canines and secodont molars but the number of teeth is less than in other carnivores like dogs or bears (Sunquist and Sunquist 2002). Felids vary enormously in size. Large size differences within a particular species are found in species with broad geographic distributions (Sunquist and Sunquist 2002). Although most of the cat species are solitary, felids use visual signals (e.g., cheek rubbing), odours (secretions from various glands, saliva, urine, faeces) and a variety of vocalizations for communication within a certain social system (Sunquist and Sunquist 2002).