Cats Prefer the Lazy Way to Dinner
2 min read 
THURSDAY, Aug. 19, 2021 (HealthDay Information) — Want Fluffy to take in? You should not make her function for her supper.
Specified the option concerning a readily out there food tray and fixing a puzzle to get at their nosh, 17 domestic cats in a new review took the effortless way out.
“It was not that cats hardly ever utilized the food stuff puzzle, but cats ate extra foodstuff from the tray, used much more time at the tray and made extra 1st alternatives to tactic and eat from the tray alternatively than the puzzle,” said cat behaviorist Mikel Delgado, a investigate affiliate at the University of California Davis University of Veterinary Drugs.
The cats in the review wore activity monitors, and even these that were far more lively most popular the quick eats about a food they could see but had to do the job to get to.
But Delgado said the results do not mean that cat owners need to dismiss meals puzzles. Just due to the fact cats failed to prefer the one in the study isn’t going to necessarily mean they you should not like them, she said.
Delgado’s past exploration has revealed that foods puzzles can be an important enrichment action for cats.
The cats’ habits came as a shock to Delgado and her group, mainly because it was so diverse from that of other animals.
Most choose to get the job done for their meals, a actions acknowledged as contrafreeloading, they stated.
“There is an entire physique of investigation that displays that most species which include birds, rodents, wolves, primates — even giraffes — like to do the job for their foodstuff,” Delgado said. “What’s surprising is out of all these species cats appear to be to be the only ones that showed no robust tendency to contrafreeload.”
It is really not very clear why felines have that preference, she reported.
One possibility: The food puzzles utilized in the study could possibly not have stimulated cats’ all-natural searching habits, which generally will involve ambushing their prey, Delgado claimed.
The conclusions ended up not too long ago released in the journal Animal Cognition.
A lot more information
The Humane Culture of the United States has additional on cats.
Resource: College of California, Davis, information release, Aug. 13, 2021
Robert Preidt

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