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When given the choice between a free meal and performing a task for a meal, a study found cats would prefer the meal that doesn’t require much effort. While that might not come as a surprise to we cat lovers, it did surprise behaviorists. Most animals prefer to work for their food which is called contrafreeloading.
Research shows that most animals including birds, rodents, wolves, primates, even giraffes prefer to work for their food. What was surprising is out of all these species studied cats seem to be the only ones that showed no strong tendency to want to work for their food if given a choice. The study found that cats would rather eat from a tray of easily available food rather than work out a simple puzzle to get their food.
It wasn’t that cats never used the food puzzles, but cats ate more food from the tray, spent more time at the tray and made more first choices to approach and eat from the tray rather than the puzzles. The researchers said it is unclear why cats would prefer to not work for their food, but suspect the puzzles do not stimulate their natural hunting behavior for meals like pouncing on and ambushing their prey. Cat behaviorists say puzzles are still great enrichment for cats though.
Let’s see pics of your cats enjoying their food or puzzles in the comments.
TGIF Lairians