23
/Jun
9 Facts About Cats Behavior You Need to Know
Humans are capable of many feats: one of them is spending hours watching videos of cats on the internet. But scientists have already observed the life of felines with a much more technical and advanced look to try to understand them.
In the book The Lion in the Living Room, Abigail Tucker brings together the most creative and unexpected facts about cats behavior you need to know. Do not try to reproduce the experiments at home::
1 - Odors
Is it possible to identify your pet cat just by smell? This is what The Discrimination of Cat Odours by Humans, published in 2002 by the journal Perception, tried to find out. Cat owners have come into contact with blankets “impregnated” with the scent of unfamiliar cats and their own pets. Scientists asked them to sniff the blankets to see if they noticed any difference.
The majority failed: only 50% of the owners got it right, an amount incapable of supporting any theory. In a similar survey, however, nearly 90% of dog owners were able to recognize their pets, perhaps because dogs spend less time and energy cleaning their own fur, as cats do.
2 - Hunting
Science suggests that cats aren't that good at hunting rats, but vampire bats (!) can be easier prey. “Cats are efficient predators of vampires,” concluded a 1994 study that followed cats that lived in rural areas of Latin America. The presence of a cat in these locations can discourage vampire bats from attacking goats, pigs and cows. But in some cases, apparently, cats wait for the bat to suck the victim's blood — fed on blood, they don't fly as fast — before attacking them.
3 - Garfield's Diet
Studying the factors that contribute to cat obesity, animal nutritionists have concluded that owner “denial” is a big part of the problem. When 60 German obese cat owners were interviewed for an article in the Journal of Nutrition in 2006, differences between how they and scientists viewed cats became clear. Only a small percentage admitted that their pets were overweight. "Most preferred to use euphemisms like 'a little big' and didn't seek to help the animal." The reality check that cat owners needed, according to scientists, may be related to how often a cat appears in public and on the street—much less than a dog, for example.
4 - Alcohol
In 1946, cats were fed doses of alcohol-fortified milk in a controversial experiment that sought to explore the effects of alcohol consumption on stressed cats. “Everyone got drunk,” according to a description of the study published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine. They soon lost coordination and had trouble completing simple tasks like reaching the food box. "Some of them showed a preference for alcoholic beverages after that," noted the scientists.
5 - Author cat
In the 1970s, scientist Jack H. Hetherington, from Michigan State University, needed to use the name of one more author so that he could publish his article in Physycs Review Letters: a very common scientific jargon uses the word “we” as the pronoun of sentences, just what Hetherington did when writing his work. To justify the use of “we”, the contributing author turned out to be Chester, his Siamese cat who soon earned the respected F.D.C. Willard.
6 - Massacre
The shocking slaughters of a single cat were cataloged in a 2007 study, Seventeen years of predation by a suburban cat in New Zealand. The domestic cat in question was so lethal that it managed to eradicate the group of rabbits that lived in its backyard, the researchers said. The owner of the “delinquent cat”, Peng You, provided all the necessary information for the analysis.
7 - Adoration of cats in cafeterias
A recent “cat cafeteria” phenomenon, where humans pay for the company of cats, has been a gift to anthropologists. A survey brought together several reports of curious cases in places like this. “The birthday cat was dressed in a small pink kimono,” says researcher Lorraine Plourde in an article published in the journal Japanese Studies. "Human admirers gathered around the cat to photograph him eating his dinner and then distributed gifts to the cat."
8 - Plush
For an experiment done in 2012, researchers looked at what happens when cats encounter a specific object: a stuffed owl with large glass eyes. Most of the time she was cruelly attacked.
Revenge came in another study, published by The Journal of Applied Ecology. This time, the cats were stuffed and the birds were the volunteers: the researchers positioned the toys near wild bird nests and observed their aggressive reactions. The animals were so upset that they even cut back on food collection, which could threaten their chances of survival.
9 - What do they do when we are not seeing
An article published in 2005 tried to answer the universal question: what do cats do all day? The authors identified several sources of fun for the cats, such as playing with sponges, sleeping in toasters, and facing a wide variety of things — alpacas, parking lots, snowflakes and the sun, for example. But one popular activity among many of them was the most curious: looking at nothing.
In the book The Lion in the Living Room, Abigail Tucker brings together the most creative and unexpected facts about cats behavior you need to know. Do not try to reproduce the experiments at home::
1 - Odors
Is it possible to identify your pet cat just by smell? This is what The Discrimination of Cat Odours by Humans, published in 2002 by the journal Perception, tried to find out. Cat owners have come into contact with blankets “impregnated” with the scent of unfamiliar cats and their own pets. Scientists asked them to sniff the blankets to see if they noticed any difference.
The majority failed: only 50% of the owners got it right, an amount incapable of supporting any theory. In a similar survey, however, nearly 90% of dog owners were able to recognize their pets, perhaps because dogs spend less time and energy cleaning their own fur, as cats do.
2 - Hunting
Science suggests that cats aren't that good at hunting rats, but vampire bats (!) can be easier prey. “Cats are efficient predators of vampires,” concluded a 1994 study that followed cats that lived in rural areas of Latin America. The presence of a cat in these locations can discourage vampire bats from attacking goats, pigs and cows. But in some cases, apparently, cats wait for the bat to suck the victim's blood — fed on blood, they don't fly as fast — before attacking them.
3 - Garfield's Diet
Studying the factors that contribute to cat obesity, animal nutritionists have concluded that owner “denial” is a big part of the problem. When 60 German obese cat owners were interviewed for an article in the Journal of Nutrition in 2006, differences between how they and scientists viewed cats became clear. Only a small percentage admitted that their pets were overweight. "Most preferred to use euphemisms like 'a little big' and didn't seek to help the animal." The reality check that cat owners needed, according to scientists, may be related to how often a cat appears in public and on the street—much less than a dog, for example.
4 - Alcohol
In 1946, cats were fed doses of alcohol-fortified milk in a controversial experiment that sought to explore the effects of alcohol consumption on stressed cats. “Everyone got drunk,” according to a description of the study published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine. They soon lost coordination and had trouble completing simple tasks like reaching the food box. "Some of them showed a preference for alcoholic beverages after that," noted the scientists.
5 - Author cat
In the 1970s, scientist Jack H. Hetherington, from Michigan State University, needed to use the name of one more author so that he could publish his article in Physycs Review Letters: a very common scientific jargon uses the word “we” as the pronoun of sentences, just what Hetherington did when writing his work. To justify the use of “we”, the contributing author turned out to be Chester, his Siamese cat who soon earned the respected F.D.C. Willard.
6 - Massacre
The shocking slaughters of a single cat were cataloged in a 2007 study, Seventeen years of predation by a suburban cat in New Zealand. The domestic cat in question was so lethal that it managed to eradicate the group of rabbits that lived in its backyard, the researchers said. The owner of the “delinquent cat”, Peng You, provided all the necessary information for the analysis.
7 - Adoration of cats in cafeterias
A recent “cat cafeteria” phenomenon, where humans pay for the company of cats, has been a gift to anthropologists. A survey brought together several reports of curious cases in places like this. “The birthday cat was dressed in a small pink kimono,” says researcher Lorraine Plourde in an article published in the journal Japanese Studies. "Human admirers gathered around the cat to photograph him eating his dinner and then distributed gifts to the cat."
8 - Plush
For an experiment done in 2012, researchers looked at what happens when cats encounter a specific object: a stuffed owl with large glass eyes. Most of the time she was cruelly attacked.
Revenge came in another study, published by The Journal of Applied Ecology. This time, the cats were stuffed and the birds were the volunteers: the researchers positioned the toys near wild bird nests and observed their aggressive reactions. The animals were so upset that they even cut back on food collection, which could threaten their chances of survival.
9 - What do they do when we are not seeing
An article published in 2005 tried to answer the universal question: what do cats do all day? The authors identified several sources of fun for the cats, such as playing with sponges, sleeping in toasters, and facing a wide variety of things — alpacas, parking lots, snowflakes and the sun, for example. But one popular activity among many of them was the most curious: looking at nothing.
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