How cats lap: water uptake by Felis catus

Using high-speed cameras, a team of engineers watched how house cats drink. Instead of scooping like dogs, a cat lightly touches the surface with the tip of its tongue and whips it back up, dragging a thin column of water with it.

The cat snaps its mouth shut at exactly the right moment, before gravity pulls the column back down, about four times a second. Big cats like lions do the same thing, just more slowly, as the maths predicted. Elegant, efficient and not a single splash.