Animals Hide Pain Better Than We Thought, And We Now Know How to Find It
For decades, the standard assumption was that a quiet pet was a comfortable pet. A 2016 study published in PLOS ONE, and subsequent research from the University of Lincoln, changed that. Cats in particular suppress pain behaviour as a survival mechanism, showing distress makes them vulnerable in the wild, and domestication has not erased that instinct. Dogs are only marginally more expressive.