Talk:Purr

Purring and wild cats
The article states that

"'Unlike has portrayed in the full-length animated feature, The Lion King, large wild cats, such as lions, tigers and leopards, can not purr.'"

In the external links section though, there is a link to the related Wikipedia article. In this article the following statement is made:

"'It was once believed that only the cats of the Felis genus could purr; some older texts may still say this. In fact, all cats are able to purr, although the cats of the Panthera genus (Tiger, Lion, Jaguar and Leopard) are only able to purr when exhaling. All cats other than the Panthera, even larger ones such as the cheetah, purr.'"

At least the information about about the cheetah purring is referenced with this article from a, in my opinion, more reliable source than a public wiki.

I found another non-wiki website myself here where the same thing is stated for bengal tigers, that they actually can purr while exhaling.

On yet another website here it is stated that wild cats like the cheetah purr, but the panthera genus does not.

And one more source here states again that big cats purr, different than domestic cats, but still.

Thus at the moment it seems more likely to me that wild cats do also purr, at least when exhaling and when in company with other wild cats.

So, like said, wikis aren't always the most reliable sources and in this case even state totally different fact. Sadly also some non-wiki websites have different statements on this. Does anyone have a really reliable and up-to-date source proving any of these statements? If nothing else is found that is more reliable than the stated sources I guess I'll have to visit a zoo and find out myself. I hope someone can state some reliable sources. Please consider this: Personal opinions are important, but in this case it really is much more important to get the hard, reliable facts. Greetings, RealZero 18:00, 24 October 2008 (UTC)