MOST BEAUTIFUL BREED OF CAT REVEALED – AND IT’S BAD NEWS FOR PERSIAN OWNERS
Source: Today UK News (Extract)
Posted: October 10, 2021
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest feline of them all? Well it turns out it’s not Persians, Peterbalds and Himalayans despite their hefty price tag and arguably fetching looks.
Our fur babies will always look perfect to us but technically speaking, according to mathematics, there are certain breeds of cat that are deemed to be more ‘beautiful’ than others – and some that miss the mark when it comes to being the best of the bunch.
We’ve all heard the theory behind the most attractive models being the ones with the most symmetrical faces. Well, now, a similar theory has been applied to fabulous felines. This time, using the ‘golden ratio’.
New research from All About Cats has utilised the golden ratio to analyse the facial proportions of 46 of the best-known cat breeds in order to mathematically reveal what the most beautiful cats in the world are.
Persian owners, you may want to look away for this one…
The 10 most beautiful cat breeds in the world according to the Golden Rule are:
1. Norwegian Forest and Russian Blue
2. Manx
3. Ragamuffin
4. Siberian
5. American Curl
6. Selkirk Rex
7. Siamese
8. Maine Coon
9. Egyptian Mau
10. Turkish Angora
The top three less… visually appealing, shall we say, cat breeds are:
1. Himalayan
2. Peterbald
3. Persian
Mathematical beauty does indeed not come cheap it seems with it costing between £700 and £1,200 to purchase a Russian Blue, while a Norwegian Forest cat will set its buyer back by between £600 and £1,000 and a Manx will cost between £300 and £1,000.
On the other side of the scale, the squashed nose and large eyes of the flat-faced Himalayan have landed it in the top spot for the ‘ugliest’ cat breed, followed by the peculiar Peterbald and the sassy Persian cat.
Despite this substantially lower ranking for visual appeal, the monetary value of a belonging to these breeds hardly wanes.
The price range of a Himalayan cat is between £150 and £2,000, that of the relatively rare Peterbald is between £1,200 and £2,300 and the Persian could fetch between £950 and £2,200.
What exactly is the golden ratio?
If you’re up in arms that some of your favourite breeds have ranked so low (trust us, we’re not exactly purring either), allow us to explain what the golden ratio looks at. Spoiler – it doesn’t take your cat’s loveable personality or quirky nature in to consideration.
The golden ratio is a mathematical symmetry algorithm that underlies the human perception of attractiveness. The closer we perceive a face or object to this ratio, the more aesthetically appealing it is to our brains, which are hard wired with a preference for symmetry.
This particular study used images of 46 of the best-known cat breeds to measure their facial features. As the study was only concerned with ratios, the difference in size between images did not impact the overall result.
The study took measurements for the following features before running the numbers through this golden ratio calculator to obtain the ratio score for each breed:
- Length of face
- Top of head to pupils of eyes
- Pupils to nose tip
- Pupils to mouth
- Width of nose
- Distance between outer corners of eyes
- Width of face
- Bottom of ears to pupils
- Nose tip to chin
- Mouth to chin
- Length of mouth
- Nose tip to mouth
Equipped with this ratio score, All About Cats were then able to work out the difference between each breed’s score and the golden ratio of 1.62, ranking each breed on how close their ratio score was to the ideal.
The maths has spoken but don’t worry moggies, you’re all beautiful to us!
