Is Your Cat In Pain? How Its Facial Expression Could Hold A Clue

Is Your Cat In Pain? Its Facial Expression Could Hold A Clue
Unfortunately it’s much more subtle than Grumpy Cat. But knowing your cat’s ‘resting face’ could help. JStone/Shutterstock

They say that eyes are windows to the soul. Indeed, research suggests this might also be true for our four-legged friends. Since the days of our most celebrated natural historian, Charles Darwin, humans have been interested in how animals communicate via their facial expressions, and how different species might express themselves in similar ways.

However, it wasn’t until relatively recently that scientists began to study animal faces systematically, to understand what this might tell us about their specific feelings or intentions. Most of this research has focused on trying to understand how their faces look when in pain, using “grimace scales”.

Grimace scales include a series of images that show how facial expressions change when animals experience no, moderate and severe pain. While mice were the original “guinea pigs” for these studies, similar scales have now been developed for a range of domesticated animals including horses,rabbits, ferrets, piglets, sheep, rats and also cats.

Interestingly, for many of these species, their faces seem to change in a similar manner when in pain. For example, their eyes become squinted, tension appears in their nose, mouth and cheeks, and their ears may look a bit flattened or drawn back.


 Get The Latest By Email

Weekly Magazine Daily Inspiration

Interpreting the findings

While these findings help us understand the inner world of animals, we are still a long way off from possessing the so-called King Solomon’s ring – the power to speak to animals.

One of the limitations to our understanding of animals’ expressions is that we have tended to extrapolate from what we already know about human faces, even though animals often have quite different facial musculature and use this in different ways to us.

Is Your Cat In Pain? How Its Facial Expression Could Hold A Clue
We often try to understand animals through what we know about humans. Andrey_Kuzmin/Shutterstock

There is also a potential issue when trying to identify the same expressions in species with very different looking faces; for example, a flat, round-faced Persian cat looks very different to a large-eared, long-nosed Siamese.

Some animals, especially cats, may also hold their cards close to their chests. Cat’s closest ancestors are solitary, territorial and potentially prey for larger mammals, so they are unlikely to want to advertise when they are in pain or generally feeling a bit off. Indeed, pain in cats is notoriously difficult to assess. Many cats might just become a little quiet, go off and hide, or even seemingly carry on as normal. Their expressions are therefore subtle and can be difficult for humans to identify.

Trying to assess pain by studying slight differences in facial expressions can quite literally be a pain-staking operation – it’s not always easy to do in real time and requires training. For these reasons, there has been growing interest in the use of machine learning to automate the process of analysing facial expressions in both humans and other animals.

What’s generally been missing is less human-based, and more species-specific, biologically relevant systems for animals. This was the motivation for the recent development of an approach focusing on cats which lays the foundation for future objective, automatic detection of facial expressions. Applying a technique usually reserved for measuring bones, we annotated almost a thousand pictures of cats’ faces based on the relative position of their underlying facial muscles and knowledge of how their faces change shape as their muscles contract and relax. Differences in their faces before and after routine surgery were then compared to identify expressions associated with pain.

We detected several key features linked to pain:

Is Your Cat In Pain? How Its Facial Expression Could Hold A Clue
Taking those plot points.
Lauren Finka, Author provided

(i) Ears narrowed and further apart from each other

(ii-iv) Mouth and cheek areas appear smaller and drawn in towards the nose and up towards the eyes

(v) Eyes slightly narrowed or a bit more “squinty”

(vi) Subtle differences in the shape of the cat’s outer ears, with their right ear a little narrower and further down the side of their face

(vii) Nose positioned downwards towards the mouth, away from the eyes, angled a little more to the left side of their face.

While these changes in expression may be obvious in individual cats, at a population level these were quite subtle, probably due to the general variability in the appearance of different cats’ faces. This suggests that in every day, practical situations, such as when at the vet, pain expressions could be easily missed, especially if the vet doesn’t know what the cat’s face usually looks like (their “resting cat face”).

The good news is, though, that owners may be better at detecting these subtle changes, and one day there might even be an app available to help us determine if our cats are likely to be in pain or not. This novel approach could also be developed to assess a range of other expressions and emotions, and in a range of other species. So we might soon actually have something that helps us communicate better with our pets, at the tips of our fingers.The Conversation

About the Author

Lauren Finka, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Nottingham Trent University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

books_pets

Monday, 24 July 2023 16:37

Uterine fibroids, or leiomyomas, are benign tumors commonly occurring in the uterus. They affect many women, particularly African Americans, and can lead to clinical symptoms such as abnormal...

Friday, 21 July 2023 15:37

During uncomfortably hot weather, people seek ways to cool down their homes. Air conditioners often become the default solution when temperatures rise as they provide fast and effective relief from...

Friday, 21 July 2023 14:28

  Brushing your teeth is essential for maintaining optimal oral health, but like most aspects of health, the full story is more complicated.

Friday, 21 July 2023 06:06

Are you seeking a gentle yet powerful practice that brings balance to your body and mind? Look no further than Tai Chi. 

Friday, 21 July 2023 05:40

  As the world grapples with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a surge of interest and concern regarding vaccines. Vaccines play a crucial role in preventing infectious diseases,...

Thursday, 20 July 2023 22:38

As the temperatures rise during the summer months, it's important to be aware of the risks associated with extreme heat.

Thursday, 20 July 2023 15:45

People who exercise only on the weekend have similar heart-health benefits as those who exercise throughout the week

Wednesday, 19 July 2023 17:42

The World Health Organisation (WHO) recently reported that around one in six couples globally are affected by infertility. For many years people tended to blame women for a couple’s infertility –...

AVAILABLE LANGUAGES

English Afrikaans Arabic Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Danish Dutch Filipino Finnish French German Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Indonesian Italian Japanese Korean Malay Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Romanian Russian Spanish Swahili Swedish Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese

follow InnerSelf on

facebook icontwitter iconyoutube iconinstagram iconpintrest iconrss icon

 Get The Latest By Email

Weekly Magazine Daily Inspiration

Wednesday, 21 April 2021 07:23

Whether it’s your arthritic relative who knows rain is on the way when their knees ache or your lifelong pal who gets a headache when a storm is approaching, we all know somebody who claims they...

Thursday, 15 April 2021 13:22

Skin brushing is a highly effective technique for cleansing the lymphatic system. Topics covered in this article: Benefits of Skin Brushing; What type of skin brush is the best to use; How to Brush...

Thursday, 27 July 2023 22:59

Loneliness can profoundly impact our physical and emotional health, and a new study from Tulane University has shed light on its significant role in the development of cardiovascular disease among...

Thursday, 15 April 2021 07:10

Blooming flowers, chirping birds and long-awaited rays of sunshine: The first signs of spring are often greeted with joy. But soon comes the realization that with warm weather comes ticks. 

Saturday, 08 May 2021 08:43

Humanity has always had a rocky relationship with wasps. They are one of those insects that we love to hate. We value bees (which also sting) because they pollinate our crops and make honey

Friday, 14 May 2021 08:30

Fertility has declined in most industrialised countries. While the causes are largely unknown, a number of factors may contribute to declining fertility rates, including the age...

New Attitudes - New Possibilities

InnerSelf.comClimateImpactNews.com | InnerPower.net
MightyNatural.com | WholisticPolitics.com | InnerSelf Market
Copyright ©1985 - 2021 InnerSelf Publications. All Rights Reserved.