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Fun Friday Cat Fact of the Day 9-10-21

Catzzzmeow

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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
 

Annejo12

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My crazy Raphael takes a dental dry nugget in her mouth, shakes her head, then puts it on the floor to eat it. Luckily she leaves her wet in the bowl. She won’t eat her high fibre dry if it is in a bowl so I leave it in a pile on the floor. My granddaughter thinks this is great because she often leaves a trail of the high fibre dry for Raphael to follow! Raphael also will not drink if I leave her water in the kitchen so I have two water bowls
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in the bathroom for her. Her favourite is if I leave the water running a bit in the sink. So…..who do you suppose is running this house?
 

Catzzzmeow

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My crazy Raphael takes a dental dry nugget in her mouth, shakes her head, then puts it on the floor to eat it. Luckily she leaves her wet in the bowl. She won’t eat her high fibre dry if it is in a bowl so I leave it in a pile on the floor. My granddaughter thinks this is great because she often leaves a trail of the high fibre dry for Raphael to follow! Raphael also will not drink if I leave her water in the kitchen so I have two water bowls View attachment 105159in the bathroom for her. Her favourite is if I leave the water running a bit in the sink. So…..who do you suppose is running this house?

Gotta love a good mystery


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 

Cleopatra Beers

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Cleopatra begs to differ. She works hard for every meal. She starts nagging her Daddy at least an hour before every meal. If he ignores her too much, in her opinion, the items on my work table start hitting the floor. She is a cat who believes in working for her meals, although she reserves the right to turn her nose up at any food she decides to dislike at any time.
 

Catzzzmeow

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@pussiette I just have some treats in it. We have several different things/puzzles that I rotate into use so they can work for treats. It’s fun to watch their individual strategies to get the treats. Jouët seems to be the quickest to figure them all out and Ochi prefers to watch and wait for any extra treats to come his way rather than working hard lol.

@Cleopatra Beers lol…bless Cleo….she does know how to work for her food lol.
 

pussiette

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@pussiette I just have some treats in it. We have several different things/puzzles that I rotate into use so they can work for treats. It’s fun to watch their individual strategies to get the treats. Jouët seems to be the quickest to figure them all out and Ochi prefers to watch and wait for any extra treats to come his way rather than working hard lol.

@Cleopatra Beers lol…bless Cleo….she does know how to work for her food lol.
Could you please share the brand and flavor of treats please?
 
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