How much science knows about the behavior of domestic cats

Domesticated ourselves

If you have ever seen a wild cat, then you know that this is a real lone predator who is unlikely to be happy about attempts to cuddle him. For example, they say about Pallas' cat that it can be stroked only two times - with the right hand and with the left hand. Nevertheless, today many cats live side by side with a person, bring him prey and are not at all averse to purring while sitting on his lap. How did it happen?

Since cats are extremely independent animals, they did everything themselves. And of course, not just like that, but for their own benefit. When man began farming in the Fertile Crescent region about 10 thousand years ago, he had a need for storage facilities for grain. Barns have proven to be extremely attractive to mice and rats as a food source.

The abundance of rodents gathered in one place, in turn, seemed tempting cats. However, they faced a real dilemma. By nature, these animals are not inclined to unite in flocks, only lions are considered an exception. This is partly due to their appetites: the size of the prey of cats is too small to divide it even into two individuals, and in the wild, cats can eat Tips & Resources for Feeding Your Cat up to 10 small portions of food per day. Cooperation is simply not profitable for them.

Nevertheless, thanks to human activity, there were enough rodents for everyone, and cats changed their behavior style from competition to cooperation. This does not mean that they have learned to live in friendly groups (scientists note It is almost impossible to herd cats, thanks to evolution, that cats today do not see much benefit in uniting), but they have learned to get along.

Neighborhood with each other served as the first step towards the domestication of pets so familiar to us today.

Gradually, the animals got used to the person, who later became sympathetic to them and even began to encourage their presence near the settlements - after all, cats helped to get rid of pests.

A large genetic study The palaeogenetics of cat dispersal in the ancient world of more than 200 representatives of the species, including the remains of cats that lived in Ancient Rome, Egyptian mummies and African steppe cats, showed that cats spread around the world in two large waves. The first swept over the Fertile Crescent and its surroundings: domestic cats, along with farmers, settled from Anatolia throughout the Middle East.

Several thousand years later, the second wave from Egypt covered almost all of Europe and North Africa. The real heyday of the "cat empire" came in classical Antiquity, when cats moved with humans along the Mediterranean trade routes.

It is important to note that the relationship between a person and a cat for a long time developed on the basis of mutual benefit, the external attractiveness of these animals was of little interest to people.

This is evidenced by Striped cats originated in Ottoman Empire, a new genetic study says the late appearance of the striped color commonly found in domestic cats today. Tabby cats appeared in The Ascent of Cat Breeds: Genetic Evaluations of Breeds and Worldwide Random Bred Populations in the Ottoman Empire in the XIV century, and in Europe they became widespread only in the XIX century.

Around the same time, people began to engage in the development of certain breeds - most of them appeared in the last 150 years. How can this be explained? Again, the independence of cats. Unlike dogs, they are difficult to train and are reluctant to complete the tasks of people, so it did not make much sense to select them according to certain criteria.

Society of cats

Despite the fact that cats are solitary in the wild, researchers notice that they are able to organize so-called colonies. And here, as in ancient times, the main role is played by Domestic cats (Felis catus) do not show causal understanding in a string-pulling task the food source around which the unification usually takes place. In addition, the willingness to cooperate also depends on the availability of shelter and sexual partners. But at the same time, the behavior of cats in relation to each other can be very different.

Already in ancient times it was noticed that cats can abandon their kittens, and cats can kill someone else's offspring.

One such case was described in the ancient Egyptian papyrus Inv. 21358, Köln, Papyrussammlung late 3rd or early 2nd century BC, transcribed and published last year. By the way, in ancient Egypt, the attitude towards cats was quivering, and the lives of people sometimes depended on the quirks of cat psychology, which can be seen from this case.

Herodotus already wrote that a cat can kill other people's kittens. According to the ancient Greek historian, he does this in order to mate with their mother and thus leave their own offspring. It is interesting that other felines behave in this way - for example, lions also kill the cubs of other males so that the females are not busy feeding them and can produce new offspring.

However, the relationship between cats is not always so cruel. In fact, among them can reign and striving for each other, affection and care. For example, as shown by Do Cat Families Have a Hierarchical Structure? observation, cats in colonies can take care of each other during childbirth, as well as take care of other people's newborn kittens and fight back cats hunting them.

Interestingly, in feline groups there is also a semblance of a linear hierarchy, but what leadership depends on, scientists have not yet identified Patterns of Social Interaction in Cats (Felis Domestica). In addition, the relationship within the colony can be quite complex, since the level of "sympathy" for each other in different cats varies. The social structure of cat life. Do Cat Families Have a Hierarchical Structure? against each other so that their smells mix. By the way, you can determine the position of a cat in a community by observing how it builds tactile relationships with other individuals.

If the animal has a low status, it will rub against others more often, if it is high, then they will rub against it.

In addition to tactile contact, tail movements can indicate the position of the cat in the hierarchy - more dominant animals raise it less often. Cats in general pay a lot of attention to body language when communicating. Tucked ears, for example, indicate hostility in The social function of tail up in the domestic cat (Felis silvestris catus), while a raised tail indicates a friendly mood. But the plaintive, sometimes heart-rending meow was invented exclusively for humans and is considered a distinctive feature of domestic cats. We just don't understand them differently.

Not at all like us

People tend to endow the surrounding objects, animals and even natural phenomena with human qualities - in psychology this is called anthropomorphism. Cats, who are sometimes called vindictive, insidious, and cunning on the Internet, did not escape this fate. But are they really like that?

To begin with, carrying a cunning plan requires a good memory - and cats have it. Experiments show One-trial visual recognition in cats that they have a well-developed long-term memory. For example, if animals have learned to perform some task, they will be able to repeat it even after ten minutes.

But working memory What are the differences between long-term, short-term, and working memory? memory, thanks to which we are able not to put the same ingredient in a dish twice and not to make mistakes in other daily activities, is not very good in cats. In one experiment, 24 animals were observed as a researcher hides an object in one of four boxes. The cats then had to wait 0, 10, 30 or 60 seconds before they could start looking for the object. After 30 seconds, many subjects could hardly find the hidden object, and after 60 seconds, the search results were close to random.

The fact is that in nature, a cat does not need a long working memory - after all, the chances that a potential prey will sit still for a whole minute while a predator prepares to attack it is not so great.

Further, deceit presupposes an appropriate character - after all, not every creature is capable of cunning or revenge. There are not so many works devoted to the types of "personality" in cats, but mainly they show that the feline character is formed at a very early age. Small differences in the behavior of kittens are observed already on the fifth or sixth day after birth, and after 3-4 weeks they have relatively stable traits.

Experiments on domestic cats have identified The behavior of the domestic cat in three types of “personality”: “social, confident, good-natured”, “shy, nervous” and “aggressive”. However, the relationship between a cat and a person is largely formed by The impact of paternity and early socialization on the development of cats' behavior to people and novel objects in the early childhood of an animal. A kitten that is held in its arms for 40 minutes a day will treat people with greater interest and calmness than a kitten that is held in its arms for 15 minutes a day (not to mention a kitten that grew up on the street and with no people contacted at all - in adulthood it will be almost impossible to tame him). So only you can endear your pet to yourself.

And the last ingredient required to create an insidious plan is, of course, logic. Some of the simplest laws of logic (and physics) are known to cats. In one of the experiments, There’s no ball without noise: cats’s prediction of an object from noise, Japanese felinologists placed three metal balls in a wooden box, which, rolling along the bottom, produced loud sounds. In half of the cases when the scientists turned the box over, the balls were held to the bottom by a magnet and did not fall to the floor. The cats that followed the experimenters' actions looked at the box longer when the result was "illogical" - that is, the balls that made noise did not fall out, or, on the contrary, balls fell out of the box that had not previously emitted any sounds. From the behavior of animals, scientists concluded that they understand the concept of gravity (of course, in a very simplified form) and simple causal relationships.

However, experiments with more complex conditions do not always give reliable results. In one of the works, scientists tied an award to a string: to get a treat, a cat had to pull on it. The animals did a good job as long as there was only one rope, but if there were two of them (one without a treat), the subjects could not choose the right one. The authors of the work could not unambiguously explain Domestic cats (Felis catus) do not show causal understanding in a string-pulling task its results: perhaps cats do not understand logical connections, or maybe they just like to play with strings and the process itself brings their pleasure.

However, felinologists say that the behavior of cats should not be overly complicated. Of course, they, like humans, are capable of emotions, but their emotional spectrum is much less wide, and these animals are not capable of such complex feelings as revenge or remorse due to the absence of abstract thinking. A cat's "insidious" behavior is usually associated with stress, therefore, first of all, it is necessary to eliminate its source. Then your life together will be really enjoyable.