Hank: So lions and tigers can roar. You've heard them roar. But you have never heard your house cat roar, which is kind of a shame.

But there's a trade-off: Your cat can purr, which felines that roar cannot do. Researchers have found that roaring cats have thick pads of tissue on their vocal chords, and these pads make the cords heavy, allowing them to vibrate slowly, resulting in a low-pitched sound that can be very loud - a roar.

Housecats, on the other hand, don't have this kind of padding, so their vocal chords can vibrate rapidly, just like making a motorboat sound with your lips, except they do it with their vocal chords. Which, because of their thick vocal chords, roaring cats cannot do; the extra padding dampens the vibrations that they would need to purr.

So you gotta chose one or the other, I happily choose purr, mostly because a house cat would have a pretty hard time killing me.

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