Cats and boxes 17.02.2015

Of all the videos and pictures about cats, the record for the most popularity probably belongs to those where cats try to climb into a box or box that is half or even three times smaller than themselves. Well, this phenomenon has its own explanation - here we are not talking about the popularity of cats, but about their craving for boxes. Researchers from the University of Utrecht (Netherlands), having comprehensively studied the issue, came to the conclusion that small closed containers help cats avoid stress.

It cannot be said that Claudia Vinke and her colleagues were pioneers here. Ethologists have been studying the habits of domestic cats for decades; in particular, it was possible to find out that cats generally prefer a complex landscape: where there are passages, hiding places, various shelters, they feel better. At first glance, it is clear why: despite domestication, cats have remained the same small predators that they have always been, and they prefer to hunt from ambush. Where there are many such ambushes, they feel more confident.

But, on the other hand, there are purely psychological reasons: on rough terrain, in a complex environment, cats are less likely to experience stress. Rachel Casey and her colleagues from the University of Bristol wrote about this, for example, in their article in Animal Welfare a few years ago. So the new study, published in Applied Animal Behavior Science, is just a continuation of the old topic, only this time the authors of the work studied the relationship of cats not to the whole vast landscape, but to some of its elements, that is, to boxes.

The original hypothesis was the same: a tight closed "nest" helps animals get rid of stress. The experiment was set up with several cats and cats that had recently arrived at a pet shelter, where they had to wait for a permanent owner. Some were "landscaped" with boxes, others were left without "amenities". A few days later, the difference in the behavior of those and others became apparent, and using a special rating system, it was possible to show exactly how much stress is higher for "boxless" cats than for those that lived with boxes. In particular, animals that had the opportunity to hide in the "nest" quickly got used to the new environment and communicated more actively with humans.

Of course, many (if not all) animals hide when they are scared or simply uncomfortable, but in cats this is exacerbated by the fact that they have less developed conflict resolution mechanisms. If they feel unwanted attention to themselves, anxiety, hostility, then they simply try to evade the situation - and evading it is best in a shelter box.

"Stress Explanation" is obviously fine for scared, tense cats. But after all, even those who live for their own pleasure and which the owners wear in their arms, who do not have a trace of stress - still climb into cramped boxes. In such a case, there is another hypothesis that links love to a cramped place with thermoregulation. According to Wired, back in 2006, biologists found that a comfortable ambient temperature, when an animal does not need to spend energy either on heating or cooling itself, for cats ranges from 30 ° C to 36 ° C. With the human comfort temperature, which lies between 18°C ​​and 25°C, this does not match. The researchers were not too lazy and at the same time estimated the temperature in the houses where the cats live - it turned out that on average it is several degrees lower than the animal would like. So a box or box can also be a kind of heater with insulating walls, in which the cats create a comfortable temperature for themselves.

Most likely, you should not choose one thing to explain the attraction of domestic cats to boxes: today your pet wants to sit in ambush, tomorrow it will be pulled there because of some vague anxiety, and the day after tomorrow it will climb into the same box, but just to warm up. However, cats, despite all the efforts of zoopsychologists, still remain very mysterious creatures, and therefore their addiction to boxes may have some other reasons unknown to us.