If your cat slaps with its left paw, it may be a small male cat. When your cat knocks on your favorite coffee cup from the counter, observe if it's a left or right paw?
There is no need to sacrifice a coffee cup to get answers. According to a small feline study published in the journal Animal Behavior, female cats are more likely to have a dominance of their right paw, while male cats generally prefer their left paw. Study author Deborah Wells, a reader at Queen's University Of Belfast's School of Psychology, said that while these grunting trivia may seem trivial, your cat's main paws may be an indicator of animal health.
Yes, cats can (and usually) have an advantageous paw preference. Wells and her colleagues write that when an animal favors one side of the body over the other, it is called partiality. Amphibians, rodents, primates, marsupials and even whales also have laterality. [10 Strange Cat Behaviors Explained]
For the study, Wells and her colleagues looked at paw preference data from different breeds of 44 cats (24 males and 20 females) collected by cat owners over a three-month period. Unlike previous studies of cat's paw dominance conducted in a laboratory setting, participating cats were monitored over the course of their daily family life to understand which paw they naturally caused in several routine behaviors.
Finally, 73 percent of cats showed a distinct paw preference when exposed to food, 70 percent showed preference when walking down stairs, and 66 percent showed preference when stepping on the lips of a dumpster.
Both male and female cats exhibit dominant paw preferences, with male cats mostly using their left front paws and female cats strongly supporting their right front paws. (Both male and female cats don't seem to like sleeping on the side.) ）
"The findings are increasingly strongly pointing to potential differences in neural structures in male and female animals," Wells said in a statement. While the explanation for this gender-biased behavior may be as simple as the presence of different hormones in male and female cats, Wells said the cat's preferred paws could be a strong indicator of an animal's personality.
For example, flanking animals that are not biased towards one side or the other, and those that are more inclined to be dominated by the left limb, seem to be more frivolous and more susceptible to welfare than those who prefer right-limb use," Wells said. "For example, we just found that dogs with left limbs are more pessimistic than dogs on the right. From a pet owner's perspective, knowing whether an animal has a left or right leg may be useful because it helps them gauge how vulnerable an individual is to stressful situations. ”