"Cats know just when to close their jaw to get the most water," said Pedro Reis, a fluid mechanics expert at MIT who collaborated with Stocker. In fact, he said it's as if "they're doing the equations in their heads."

The unusual experiments involved four MIT scientists, 10 domestic cats, one "robotic cat" forged from a prototype originally built for the International Space Station, four zoo animals and six videos uploaded to YouTube by people who filmed large cats in zoos, on safaris and elsewhere. The research took 3 1/2 years to complete.

Stanford marine biologist Mark Denny praised the work, although he recognized that it lacks much immediate practical relevance.

"There's still a part of science that is just plain fun," said Denny, who wasn't involved in the research. "Everyone gives lip service to the scientific method," he added, but "this is a great example of it."

To figure out the feline fluid dynamics, the MIT team first made "detailed observations in real cats," Reis said. They filmed Cutta Cutta with a high-speed video camera, spending "many failed evenings" at Stocker's house in Cambridge, Mass., waiting for the cat to drink. They also filmed nine cats at a nearby shelter run by the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Watching the videos, the team saw that the drinking cats' tongues extended downward toward their bowls in a "J" shape. At first, the scientists thought the animals might use their tongues the way dogs do, Reis said.

In fact, only the very tips of the cats' tongues touched the water. Their tongues then moved upward at the blazing-fast speed of more than three feet per second, generating a column of liquid. The cats quickly closed their mouths to drink a portion of those columns, the study reported.

By Eryn Brown, Los Angeles Times