Why Cats Have Vertical Pupils

Jörgen Hartogs

by Stephanie Pappas, Live Science Contributor   |   August 07, 2015 02:25pm ET

Have you ever wondered why your cat’s eyes have those creepy vertical slits for pupils? A new study suggests the reason may lie in cats’ preferred mode of hunting.

Vertical-slit pupils are most common among nocturnal predators that ambush their prey, according to the new research, published today (Aug. 7) in the journal Science Advances. Most likely, this pupil shape provides the sharpest way to gauge distance for a prey-snatching leap, the study found.

The new research doesn’t only demystify the housecat, however; it also reveals that the bizarre horizontal, rectangular pupils sported by goats and sheep likely help these prey animals scan the horizon for predators — and watch the terrain when sprinting from danger. Moreover, circular pupils tend to be found on tall, active predators that are awake during the day. (Sound familiar…

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Domestic Cats (Felis silvestris catus) Do Not Show Signs of Secure Attachment to Their Owners

Jörgen Hartogs

journal.pone.0135109

The Ainsworth Strange Situation Test (SST) has been widely used to demonstrate that the bond between both children and dogs to their primary carer typically meets the requirements of a secure attachment (i.e. the carer being perceived as a focus of safety and security in otherwise threatening environments), and has been adapted for cats with a similar claim made. However methodological problems in this latter research make the claim that the cat-owner bond is typically a secure attachment, operationally definable by its behaviour in the SST, questionable. We therefore developed an adapted version of the SST with the necessary methodological controls which include a full counterbalance of the procedure. A cross-over design experiment with 20 cat-owner pairs (10 each undertaking one of the two versions of the SST first) and continuous focal sampling was used to record the duration of a range of behavioural states expressed by the cats…

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6 Secrets to Unlocking Your Cat’s Personality

Jörgen Hartogs

By Tia Ghose, Staff Writer   |   October 25, 2013 02:09pm ET

Get to know your cat

Why would little Mittens hide under the bed at the slightest sound, whereas Felix loves to cuddle with strangers? What makes Moxie scratch and bite when Henri would never unsheathe his claws?

Despite the fact that cats are the second-most popular pets in America, scientists are just now figuring out what makes one cat friendly and another a grouch. From pedigreed breeds to domestication, here are six secrets to a cat’s personality.

Their own masters

Cats really are the masters in the human-feline relationship. The feline is one of the few animals that domesticated on its own. The domestic cat arose from a wild ancestor cat called Felis silvestris lybica in the Near East and Africa, sometime between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago.

But though humans have bred specific dogs together for desired…

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Sorry, Cat Lovers: Felix Doesn’t Need You

Jörgen Hartogs

by Tia Ghose, Senior Writer   |   September 04, 2015 04:27pm ET

Dogs have owners, cats have staff. Though the old joke is a stereotype of a feline’s independent nature, that trope may have some scientific backing.  Cats do not form the childlike dependence on humans that dogs do, new research suggests.

That doesn’t mean people’s feline friends don’t bond with them, said Daniel Mills, a veterinary behavioral medicine researcher at the University of Lincoln in England.

“This is not about whether cats love their owners,” Mills told Live Science. Rather, it just means that Felis catus doesn’t look to its human owners as a source of safety and security, he added.

Strange situation

The new results are based on a test called the “Strange Situation.” In the test, which was developed for humans by psychologist Mary Ainsworth in the 1970s, researchers put a mother or primary caregiver and…

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