A new study that demonstrates the special relationship between domestic cats and their owners. In this case, this analysis concludes that these kilts who live at home can recognize their masters and family for their scent and distinguish it next to a person who is not your owner And they just met.
So with this study into the behavior of cats, it is shown that they in any case act differently: they pass Strangers smell more time and do it with their right nasal well.
However, as shown in this report, this is not the only way in which cats recognize their owners, because they also do this with a Combination of visual, auditory and sense of smell.
Cats can distinguish their masters by their scent
A study shows that these cats respond differently to the smell of their owner than to that of a person who has just met. In fact, they use more time to sniff the strangers and prefer to do it with the right nasal well. This indicates that they use cerebral hemispheres for different tasks.
Cats smell longer strangers than their own owners, which helps them to distinguish between people. A Japanese study, published in Plos One, explains that, in addition to the use of his odor capacity to communicate with each other, this type of cats also remembers the smell of their owners and family.
“Scent is an instinctive behavior for them,” explains the leading author of the project and researcher of the University of Agriculture and Technology of TokyoHidehiko Uchiyama. “The experience of a certain scent is quickly associated with memory,” he says. However, it is not the only way they recognize their masters. They also do it through a “combination of visual, auditory and olfactory senses.”
Research and explore the smell possibilities of cats
To know what degree of influence the sense of smell monopolizes in the ability to recognize the people in their environment, the Uchiyama team evaluates the reaction of 30 cats to monsters with scents of their relatives and unknown people.
The result was that these pounds They were delayed in smelling the cotton swabs of people who did not know that of their own owners. “We have included a characteristic habit to mark after the scent, which indicated that this quality could be due to rather exploratory behavior,” the researchers say in a statement.
Moreover, the researchers saw that when they used their scent to investigate new scents, they tended to first use the right nasal fossa and then on the left as soon as they became familiar. This shows that, like other animals, cats They use cerebral hemispheres according to the task they develop.
“This lateralization is clear in dogs and horses, where the left side and the right of the brain are used differently, although the results of this study do not measure brain activity, so you cannot know how this mechanism currently works,” says the researcher.
Cat owners were also asked to complete a questionnaire to evaluate the personality of their pets. The male cats with neurotic personalities tended to repeatedly smell every tube with great caution, on the other hand the most sympathetic cat meat did it more peacefully.
However, personality had no influence on the behavior of female cats during the experiment, so it cannot be standardized and more research would be needed.