Cats like to bring things to people, but on their own terms – research
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Researchers have found that domestic cats like to bring things to people, but they set their own rules for this game.
As The Guardian reports, in the course of a study published in Scientific Reports, scientists tried to better understand the behavior of animals. For this, they interviewed 924 people, in whose homes a total of 1154 cats live.
The results showed that for most animals (94%) fetching was an instinctive behavior – they fetch objects, as a rule, without training. Most of them started playing like this when they were still kittens or teenagers.
The survey also found that the vast majority of cats set social rules, often bringing only certain items to specific people.
| Photo: AllaSerebrina/Depositphotos |
“In general, cats, as you know, are difficult to train. They dictate their own rules of fetching, but at the same time you should not think that cats are not very sociable to their owners.” – says Gemma Forman, the author of the study, a doctoral student at the School of Psychology at the University of Sussex.
The owners named toys, crumpled pieces of paper and cosmetics as the most popular objects that cats like to bring.
Some brought only one specific type of item for a specific person or were only willing to play at certain times of the day.
Games with fetch more often ended on the initiative of the cat than on the initiative of the owner. Cats were also more likely to fetch items when they started the game themselves.
“The results of the study confirmed that the stereotype that cats don’t really want to do what people want and always do what they want is not unfounded.” – summarizes Gemma Foreman.
As a reminder, scientists suggest that cat owners may have a higher risk of developing schizophrenia.
Read also: After decades of interbreeding: how geneticists are saving Scottish wildcats from extinction
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