Although the provision of puzzle feeders also encourage the use of paws during feeding as does play behaviour. Having a dominant paw may be, thus, important to increase their success rate at hunting and ultimately for those cats without people feeding them, their survival. For example, they need to use their paws efficiently to hunt, hold and manipulate their prey. Such hunting behaviour requires complex motor skills to successfully capture and consume prey. They are obligate carnivores which require a meat-based diet and despite us feeding them, they still have a strong desire to hunt. Despite them now living in our homes as pets, we have done little to change their natural instincts. Why is it so important to assess paw preferences in cats?ĭomestic cats are one of the domestic species that still share similar genetic, morphological and behavioural patterns with their ancestors. So, we think, it is not surprising to see that left-handedness is much more common in cats in comparison to humans. Such cognitive processing for social relationships occurs within the left hemisphere, hence the bias towards right handedness. Humans, on the other hand, are socially obligate mammals that rely on social relations. Thus, having a brain that is sensitized to processing potential danger is advantageous for a solitary animal. As the cat is a solitary animal responsible for its own survival, its most preferred survival strategy is avoidance in most cases. The right hemisphere of the brain controls the processing of fear and stimulates withdrawal in novel situations.
One possible explanation for this brings us back to the ancestry of the domestic cat. What was a really interesting result of the meta-analysis study is that left-pawedness in cats is 3 to 4 times higher than left-handedness in humans. Unsurprisingly, 78% of cats studied use their dominant paws (whether it is their left or right) for performing certain tasks to assess paw preference set up by scientists. A recent meta-analysis study on paw preference of cats showed that cats do not show a population level asymmetry, ie, cats do not show a tendency towards right or left pawedness at the population level. The pioneer studies on functional asymmetries in cats were conducted by Graystyan and Molnar in 1954, which was then followed by more than 30 scientific studies to date. Paw preference in cats has always been a topic of interest to both cat owners and researchers. What about cats? Do they demonstrate lateralized behaviour when it comes to their paws? Is there a tendency for cats to be left or right pawed? Accordingly, lateralized individuals are expected to have higher perceptual, cognitive, and motor abilities. hemispherical specialization reduces selection time for any cognitive response, and thus, it minimises neural conflicts between two hemispheres. Having a dominant hemisphere to control certain cognitive functions, i.e. Strong lateralization is important for advanced cognitive skills. For example, in one study it was demonstrated that lateralized chicks can be alert to possible predators while they simultaneously find food. Lateralized brains can have both hemispheres working simultaneously, with each hemisphere processing different information from different sources. Although it was believed that this feature was unique for humans, recent studies showed that it is indeed a common vertebrate feature, which provides an evolutionary advantage for different animal species. Since one side of the brain controls the behaviour on the other side, the dominant hemisphere of most of the people is the left hemisphere. About ninety per cent of the human population is right-handed when performing tasks such as writing, painting or holding. Functional hemispheric asymmetries can be measured by observing lateralized behaviours such as handedness in humans. This phenomenon is called hemispheric asymmetry. They differ both in structure and in the functions they control. The two hemispheres of the brain are not the same.
Along with Professor Gonçalo Da Graça Pereira from the Escola Superior Agrária de Elvas in the Polytechnic Institute of Portalegre, Portugal, they kindly introduce us to the topic of laterality, how cats demonstrate this with their paw preferences and talk us through the recent study they co-authored with colleagues from Germany on the relationship between problem-solving ability and laterality in cats. Yasemin Salgirli Demirbas are two veterinary research scientists from the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine in Ankara, Turkey.
0 kommentar(er)
