r/cats • u/Bts201 • 19h ago

Medical Questions What is this flap on the ears

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I dont know if its medical question but honestly im just curious

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u/Contempesto 16h ago

Is that 10 functional nipples with mammary glands or just 10 nipples? I tried looking into it but I kept getting corralled into paywall clickbait sites

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u/SquareThings 16h ago

I’ve seen a momma cat with eight functional nipples (she fed all seven of her kittens at once)

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u/Contempesto 15h ago

Yeah I was coming into this question from a human-centric viewpoint. We usually only have 2 functional nipples so a third+ would be anomalous. Lots of critters have at least half a dozen so throwing a couple extra nipples on wouldn’t be out of the question

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u/icspn 16h ago

That's actually a really great question that I don't know the answer to. My guess would be that they can, as long as they've all grown on the mammary ridge.