Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2022 July 13

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July 13[edit]

Stray cat skull differences[edit]

Are the skulls of stray and non-pedigreed cats of the same age as unique as human skulls? That said, can a specialist find the differences between two stray cat skulls of the same age? Thanks. 212.180.235.46 (talk) 17:17, 13 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Are human skulls that unique? The shape of an individual's skull may change over the years, and the variation is considerably larger than that between closely matched pairs of skulls. Of course, given two randomly selected individuals, the chance that the shapes of their skulls cannot readily be distinguished is vanishingly small. I have no reason to suspect that this is not equally true for non-inbred cats.  --Lambiam 20:59, 13 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This site offers a 10-point scale of cat head shapes of different cat breeds. Philvoids (talk) 22:45, 14 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]