Do Cats have Belly Buttons?

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Cat owners might be curious whether cats have belly buttons or not. A cursory inspection would suggest that cats don’t have belly buttons. However, a more thorough effort will reveal that cats do indeed have belly buttons. The issue is that this is a part of their body that is very difficult to detect, particularly since they can have very good reasons to be less than enthused about people examining their belly.

Cat Owners Should Know

To understand what is going on, people need to know how a belly button is created. Simply put, a human can’t just absorb nourishment through their skin. Instead, when they were still in the womb, they received both oxygen and nourishment through the umbilical cord, which was connected to the placenta, which was connected to the uterus, which received both oxygen and nourishment from the rest of their mother’s body. When a human is born, the umbilical cord becomes unnecessary. As a result, it is standard practice for the umbilical cord to be cut. After which, their body will seal up that connection, which will eventually cause the remainder of the umbilical cord to fall off on its own. Of course, this is assuming that everything proceeds as it should. Something that isn’t guaranteed to be the case. Most mammals experience something similar. They are sustained by an umbilical cord when they are still in the womb. When they are born, their umbilical cord won’t be cut. Instead, it is common for their mother to use their teeth to sever the umbilical cord instead. After which, the remainder of the umbilical cord will eventually fall off on its own. Cats are no exception to this rule.

As for why cats don’t have a very noticeable belly button, well, there are a number of things that should be pointed out. First, different species have different belly buttons. We have very noticeable belly buttons. In contrast, other species don’t because their belly buttons are pretty much just standard scars. Cats don’t fall into the first category. Instead, they fall into the second category, meaning that their belly buttons were never very noticeable in the first place. Second, there are limits to how much scars can heal. However, scars can take quite some time to hit that limit. Thanks to this, the belly buttons of older cats are even less noticeable than the belly buttons of younger cats because they have had more time for those scars to heal. Third, most cats are covered in hair. Indeed, some cat breeds are covered in extra-long hair. As such, that makes it even more difficult to detect the belly button, particularly if the cat isn’t feeling very cooperative about the whole thing in the first place.

What Are Some Ways that Belly Buttons Can Go Wrong?

One can’t help but wonder whether cats got the better deal in this regard. Generally speaking, our belly button forms with minimal issue. However, it is very much possible for the process to go wrong in one way or another. Sometimes, the result is bad but not particularly problematic. For example, there are some people whose belly button fails to form in the proper manner but are fine in other respects. As a result, they might find that to be embarrassing. However, if they feel strongly about it, they will eventually be able to get that issue fixed thanks to modern cosmetic surgery. Other times, the result can be much more horrific because there are so many possible ways for the human body to go wrong. For example, it is apparently possible for someone to have fecal matter come out of their belly button. Essentially, this can happen when an abnormal passage develops between their intestines and their belly button. Thanks to that, it is possible for the contents of their intestines to come out that way, which means fecal matter. Similarly, it is apparently possible for someone to have menstrual blood come out of their belly button. In that case, what happens is that they have uterine lining growing in places where it shouldn’t. It is very rare, but it is possible for uterine lining to grow in a place that will cause menstrual blood to come out of the belly button at the right point in the menstrual cycle. Something that can be just as terrifying as the aforementioned issue but in a somewhat different way. In any case, it should come as no surprise to learn that these are the kinds of issues that should convince people to seek out a doctor sooner rather than later. Fortunately, it is possible for them to get assistance.

Are There Animals that Don’t Have Belly Buttons?

Some people might wonder whether there are animals that don’t have belly buttons. If so, the answer is “Yes.” The gist of it is that belly buttons are a placental mammal thing. Said category encompasses most but not all of the mammals that exist in modern times. For example, both cats and dogs have belly buttons. However, a platypus would not, which makes sense because platypus was never connected to its mother through an umbilical cord. Instead, it came out as an egg because its species consists of egg-layers. Similarly, every single kind of egg-layer lacks belly buttons because they never went through the process responsible for producing belly buttons. This means fish; this means reptiles; this means amphibians; and so on and so forth.

Of course, it is also worth mentioning that there are plenty of animals that don’t have what we would consider to be a belly, which in turn, makes it rather difficult for them to have a belly button. On vertebrates, the belly is very easy to define, seeing as how it is just the body cavity situated above the pelvis while being enclosed by the abdominal muscles in front and a part of the spine in the back. On other animals that are further away from us, this can become much more difficult. For them, asking about the belly button would be like asking about a human’s flight feathers, which is to say, nonsensical because they don’t even have the part of the body that it would theoretically be attached to.

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