LSM1303 Animal Behaviour Student Blog : cats

Meowww....You're only a Beta!

WAN MEIYI — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 18:09:00 GMT

How would you know whether you are a beta or an alpha?

Introduction
Cats live amongst humans and are part of our everyday lives. We humans commonly have the misconception that cats are clean animals as they know how to groom and clean themselves, and even bury their own faeces to rid the smell. However, have we ever thought how this instinctive nature evolved?

A Cat's Instinct
It is a cat’s natural instinct to cover their faeces. Even in the wild, cats bury their poop without requring any form of training. However, there are cases where your kitty just refuses to cover its poop, and why is that so?

Why Cats Cover their Faeces
The reason for this behavior is the necessity to cover their trail and protect themselves from possible predation. This poop burying behavior observed in cats is not only for avoidance of predation; it is also due to the natural territorial behavior in cats. It is surprising that dominant felines in the wild do not cover up their fecal deposits but displays them prominently. It is similar to their urine markings and is another method of territorial marking. However, beta and gamma cats usually cover their feaces due to the hierarchical nature of a clan, and not covering it would mean a contest of position and authority. From these scent markings of pee and poop, cats from other clans would know where the border of their territory is.

The Home-Dwelling Cat
Then why does your home-dwelling cat possess this trait despite having no other cats around? In actual fact, the cat recognizes you as the owner of the house, and a dominant figure (the alpha character), and thus covers up its pee and poop after doing its business in fear of offending you. So if your cat happens to be one of those that refuse to cover its mess, it means that you are seen as its subordinate instead! (You loser!!)

Introduction of new cats into your house might trigger the display of this territorial behavior to show its dominance over the others. Sometimes there may be one or even two alpha felines. In such a situation, both cats will not cover its poop and may allow the other dominant to share its territorial space at different times of the day to avoid confrontation. So if you take some time to observe your cats, you might realize that their daily resting locations are of a periodic routine!

So, are you the alpha or the beta figure in your territory?

References:
http://www.catsinternational.org/articles/natural_cat_behavior/cats_view_of_territory.html
http://www.moggies.co.uk/behaviour.html
http://amby.com/cat_site/carter_4.html
http://bobmckee.com/Client%20Info/CatTerritory.html
http://www.perfectpaws.com/help2.html
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Pointe/9352/behavior.html

Inhuman Doctors: Zoopharmacognosy and Self Medicating Animals

Vigneshwaran Shunmugam — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 15:15:00 GMT

Many major cultures around the globe have developed some form of medical science. The Indians have Ayurveda, the Chinese have TCM and of course there is Western medicine. What these fields have in common is that they are derived from the process of observing the effects of certain herbs or foods on the health of the imbiber and thus correlating cause and effect. While medical science and its practitioners have long been held to be at the forefront of human intellectual pursuits, we now realise that this was no great achievement at all. In fact, even monkeys do it.

Observe this Orang Utan for example.

Right. This is just a monkey opening a packet of powder. Nothing fancy. However, monkeys DO develop their own medical techniques to deal with their own health issues. This is known as Zoopharmacognosy which is basically the animal form of Medical Science. Many species of animals use various techniques to deal with their maladies.

If you have seen your dog or cat eating grass you may have been puzzled at their sudden vegetarianism. They do have good reason for doing so. Eating grass "stimulates either retching or the rapid expulsion of worms in diarrhea" (Hart and Hart 1985). Compare this with the Tamil proverb which claims that a Tiger would not eat grass, no matter how hungry.

Medicine is not a purely mammalian pursuit either.Snakes too have herbological knowledge! "According to Chinese folklore, many centuries ago a farmer in the Yunnan district found a snake near his hut. Fearful for his life, he beat it senseless with a hoe and left it for dead. A few days later, the same snake returned. Again he tried to kill it, but again it returned. After he had beaten it a third time, the farmer followed the severely wounded snake as it crawled into a clump of weeds, started feeding on them, and thereby rapidly cured the worst of its injuries. The plant in the story was Panex notoginseng, which now forms the main ingredient in the herbal formulation 'Yunnan bai yao', a white powder that cauterizes cuts and stems external bleeding immediately. It was standard issue in the Vietnam War, for use when soldiers were wounded far from conventional medical treatment. "(Reid 1987).

Our closest cousins, the Great Apes have various methods by which they keep themselves in the pink of health.

Above we see a chimpanzee(Pan troglodytes) chewing on the bitter pith of the Vernonia Amygdalina plant. Chewing on the pith allows the chimp to extract the bitter juice that is within. THe chimpanzees use this method to kill parasites in their intestinal tracts. Interestingly, chimps do not usually eat this leaf due to it being slightly toxic to them. Thus, they only eat this leaf for medicinal purposes! This paper has extensive information on this phenomenon, complete with graphs. The author Michael Huffman is an eminent figure in the field of Zoopharmacognosy.

Chimps sometimes consume the leaves of the Aspilia plant, which they got to great lengths to obtain. The leaves are covered in stiff hairs and are swallowed whole, despite the difficulty of doing so. "Huffman doesn't doubt that there is a medicative function behind leaf swallowing behavior. His theory about how it gets rid of worms revolves around the hairiness of the leaves. Huffman found live worms in chimp *** stuck "like Velcro" to leaf hairs and trapped within the folds. He speculates that worms may become attached to the leaves or somehow enticed into the folds during digestion, taking a "magic carpet ride" through the gastrointestinal tract, eventually to be excreted from the body. Chemicals in the plant may also decrease the ability of the parasites to adhere to the intestine, making it easier for them to be swept out by the leaves."

Perhaps the animal use of medicines to treat themselves is not such a surprising phenomenon. In fact post-Darwinists should have predicted it regardless of evidence. Using medical methods enables an animal to prevent its death,prolong its life, to heal faster and have a survival advantage. This is an advantage that would allow those animals who use it to be more successful than those who dont. In the abscence of a consequent negative selection pressure, animals who self-medicate would definitely outsurvive those who do not. Thus, Zoopharmacognosy is not surprisingly prevalent in the animal kingdom.

Not only do animals consume herbs and plants as medicines, but they also consume certain types of soil(geophagy) and insects for the same purpose.

Even more interesting than the fact that animals employ medical science is the fact that many of the herbs and techniques employed by animals are similarly employed by humans. This highlights the cross pollination of medical knowledge from the animal kingdom to ours.

To learn more on the exciting field of Zoopharmacognosy, this book might help.

"Really Wild Remedies—Medicinal Plant Use by Animals" by Jennifer A. Biser. Zoogoer, January/February 1998

Huffman, M.A. 2001. Self-Medicative Behavior in the African Great Apes: An Evolutionary Perspective into the Origins of Human Traditional Medicine. Bioscience, 51(8):651-661.

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A Cat's Nine Lives

QURRATU'AINI BTE RAHMAD — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 08:33:00 GMT

As long as a cat is able to see, it usually land on all four paws. It’s something they have developed over time from climbing trees to pounce on their prey, run away from predators and looking down on the world from a high bough! Although cats have developed an arch shaped claw which are better for climbing than using as weapons, these claws apparently only works on tree trunks, but are pretty useless against bricks and metals. As a result, when cats prey on moving birds from the ledge of windows, they could not hold on to anything to save themselves.

Cats are known to pounce on their prey. They identify their prey through moving objects. People living in tall buildings often allow their cats to sit on window ledges allowing their cats to pounce on any moving objects that are seen outside the windows. There are so many cats known to have fallen off tall buildings that urban veterinarians gave it a name: The High- rise Syndrome.

However, they have found a puzzling yet interesting phenomenon about cats falling off tall buildings. That is, cats that fall from higher floors did not suffer as much injuries as cats that fall from lower floors. In fact, if the cat is given prompt medical attention, cats that fall from two to thirty-two stories would have survived 90% of the time.

The medical team from New York did a research based on cats coming through their doors from falling through high rise buildings. They found out that cats that fall from a height under six stories sustain more severe injuries compared to cats falling from over six stories. Based on their study, they have developed a theory that explains this phenomenon: cats reach terminal velocity when at about five stories. At this point they relax and are able to spread their bodies like parachutes allowing them to slow themselves down. This ability of the cat to increase drag is vital in the cats survival, as they could slow down the acceleration of free fall from a human’s 130mph to theirs of just 60mph. As they land, they arch their backs to cushion the impact, therefore less severe injuries.

Here’s a video to explain a cat’s survival ‘techniques’ as it falls from buildings: http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/player/animals/mammals-animals/cats/cats_domestic_ninelives.html

In contrast, when cats fall from lower stories, they did not manage to reach top speed. They are rigid and flexed. They did not have time to position themselves in a way to cushion the impact, thus suffering from greater impact.

To record, a cat has known to survive from a fall of 42 stories high. However, it is not without any injuries that the cat still survives. Many cats that fall from great heights are known to have undergone fractures, broken teeth, or internal injuries upon landing. Therefore, it is very important that the cat gets prompt treatment after going through a traumatic fall. Else, the rate of survival would not be as high.

The ability for cats to position themselves in such a way that enables them to survive falling from extreme heights certainly lives up to the myth that cats have nine lives!

References:

"High-Rise Syndrome" by Jason Bellows. Damn Interesting, 8 November 2006.

"Does a Falling Cat Always Land on Its Feet?" by John Stossel and Frank Mastropolo. abc News, 15 August 2007.

"Highrise Syndrome in Cats," by Dr Dawn Ruben. PetPlace.com.