First of all, many dogs prefer to move water from a fountain. If you go to a dog park, you may see numerous dogs lined up at the water fountain waiting for someone to turn on the faucet instead of drinking from the dirty bowl. The reason for this is not just because of cleanliness or being finicky, but dogs have learned through their heritage that running water has invariably (before man) been significantly cleaner compared to stagnant water. It’s also not as likely to make them sick. Sure, they’ll drink from a dirty sewer or puddle, but when a faucet is this close to the bowl, they’ll often choose the faucet. So the next time you see your dog waiting at a faucet, now you can be motivated to help.

A quick comparison of how people drink water can be helpful in understanding why dogs seem so much messier and louder when it comes to quenching their thirst. People usually have water, from the tap as they say, and they can get it easily. We all have puffs of sweat all over our bodies, making it much easier for us to control our body temperature. Whereas domestic dogs have pads of sweat mainly on their paw pads, so they mostly expel heat through their mouths and pant quickly. If you have a very hot dog and a dehydrated dog, now you can imagine why they sometimes seem needy and unmannerly while they are drinking water.

The way people drink water is really different from that of dogs and cats. Human beings have several options when it comes to drinking. We can use our opposable hands and thumbs to get water containers. We can tilt our skull back and pour water directly into our mouth, we can drink water loudly from a saucepan, or we can use a pipe to suck water into our mouth. Society has made people commonly shy when drinking in public places and we all try to use a method that limits noise. This means that most of us tend to tilt our heads and slowly pour a glass of water directly into our mouths.

The procedure for domestic dogs is quite different. Domestic dogs and domestic cats happen to be carnivores. For this reason, their jaw system differs profoundly from humans and any animal that eats vegetables. Human beings, just like vegetable eaters, have the ability to move their jaws sideways and chew and grind our plant matter to extract the nutrients from the puree. However, domestic dogs have highly effective jaws designed to tear through meat and ensnare prey. They do not have the ability to move their jaw laterally and, along with this, they do not have full cheeks. Which means they have the inability to create a vacuum using their jaws and draw water like we can. This is the reason why they need to invent a different way of drinking.

The way dogs and cats drink can be revealed in time-lapse movies of our pets drinking. He confirms that they must develop a method to transport water from a plate or the earth to the mouth without the ability to suck. They might try to submerge your face in the water. However, shallow pools do not allow this either, so they have decided on an ingenious alternative technique. Basically, they stick out their tongue and produce a cup shape from it. They then dip the cup into the water and then take it off in their mouths. Sometimes the glass is upside down, however, the waves in the tongue area and the speed with which they retract cause a few drops of water to remain in the glass before the animals close their mouths.

Domestic cats have developed another approach. What they do is put their tongue in the water faster than a dog would, and also stick it out very quickly. This step creates a path of water from the surface of the water to the inside of the cat’s mouth. When they close their mouth, they successfully block the spine and catch whatever part of the spine is inside their mouth. He imagines that this personalized way of drinking is aimed at keeping whiskers, which are an important sensory tool for domestic cats, dry. This is particularly important in the dark, as they primarily use their whiskers to determine the position of materials.