Why do cats lick you? Grooming is only one way cats say, I love you." Some cats shower their favorite humans with sandpaper kisses. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. If you've ever been around a cat, you know they can get the sudden urge to groom themselves at just about any moment. Everything seems lovely and content. Then, they lose all interest in you and start licking their butt. A cat will be busy grooming themselves. Other cats can't be bothered and won't ever groom or lick their human friends, or other kitty friends for that matter. So, why do some cats lick their owners? Are they trying to clean you, too? We asked an animal behaviorist and cat expert to help us sort out exactly what is going on when your cat licks you. For a mother cat, grooming is an important part of child rearing. When a mama cat licks her kittens it serves two important purposes: keeping her kittens clean and promoting social bonds, Kristyn Vitale, an animal behaviorist at Maueyes Cat Science and Education tells . On the one hand, "mother cats are going to groom their kittens to help keep them clean and healthy," says Vitale. Kittens can be especially susceptible to diseases, and "anybody who's raised young kittens knows how dirty they can get, and a mother cat is not going to obviously bathe their kitten in a tub.

The flat-headed felines are the smallest wild cats in Southeast Asia. New images from Thailand's DNP and Panthera prove the existence and rediscovery of one of the world's most Endangered and least known wild cats, the flat-headed cat, in Thailand's Princess Sirindhorn Wildlife Sanctuary. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Camera traps in Thailand have captured adorable passersby with significant implication for the country's conservation efforts. While these furry creatures might look like your average house cat, they're actually wild flat-headed cats ().

In true feline style, cats took their time in deciding when and where to forge bonds with humans. According to new scientific evidence, the shift from wild hunter to pampered pet happened much more recently than previously thought - and in a different place. A study of bones found at archaeological sites suggests cats began their close relationship with humans only a few thousand years ago, and in northern Africa not the Levant. They are ubiquitous, we make TV programmes about them, and they dominate the internet, said Prof Greger Larson of the University of Oxford. That relationship we have with cats now only gets started about 3.5 or 4,000 years ago, rather than 10,000 years ago.