The team is now trying to solve the mystery of the crouching tiger by guiding different cat species over force plates—fancy 3-D bathroom scales that will measure the forces they produce with each step. Meanwhile, a camera will record the positions of their legs. By combining this information, the team can work out how cats differ in their movements, and whether the big ones have any biomechanical tricks that compensate for their unexpected postures.

Hutchinson is an old hand at such studies. He has guided rhinos, emus, elephants, salamanders, horses, and penguins over force plates before. Each species presents its own challenges. Giraffes were especially easy; cats, less so. The tigers of Colchester Zoo were terrified of the force plates and the researchers themselves—were, in turn, terrified of the tigers. But after a lot of chicken bribes (and a few rubber mats that were torn apart by the animals), the team got the data they needed. Here's what it looks like when things go well: a tiger strides purposefully through a wooden walkway and over a force plate embedded in the floor:

Having captured data for panthers, pumas, tigers, and cheetahs, the team are now trying to study smaller cat species, and the Cat Survival Trust has several. “We’re mostly playing it by ear because we don’t know how these animals are going to behave,” Hutchinson tells me. “It’s unpredictable what’s going to happen here so we’re going to start with a relatively easy animal.”

He meant the golden cat. Dispirited by its refusal to cooperate, the team tried their luck with Pudding, a rambunctious four-month-old Eurasian lynx with a spotted coat, tufty ears, and large doleful eyes. In the wild, his long legs and large feet would be ideal for padding through snow. In captivity, they're great for mauling a dead chicken, and killing a broom that's propped up against his cage. Unlike the other golden cats, Pudding is well acclimated to people. “We'll get something with him; he should perform again and again,” says Hutchinson.

The problem is that, acclimation aside, Pudding is still a cat—an innate master of not doing what you want him to do. He pounces on the force plates. He walks around them. He steps on to them but then leaps off. He mooches on top of them. He bites the power cables. Hutchinson asks if he can go in the cage and try to lead Pudding around. Sure, says the keeper, “but he's got a thing for trying to sever your spinal cord.” The keeper goes in with Pudding's teddy—a well-chewed soft toy lynx!—and tries to lead him around, but he leaps and twists and runs, instead of purposefully walking over the plates like the Colchester tiger. “We need a bored cat,” says Hutchinson.

As we watch, I ask him if this study will lead to any medical insights that would be important for cat owners. It won't. It's simply about the evolution of these endearing animals. “It’s a basic science project,” he says. “It’s curiosity-driven.”

Curiosity, huh? Maybe that’s why the cats aren’t cooperating.

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