CORNWALL, UNITED KINGDOM - A scientist from Cornwall College Newquay has discovered the best excuse for adopting that cat you’ve always wanted.
Her study is entitled ‘Does cat attachment have an effect on human health? A comparison between owners and volunteers’, suggests that for both owners and volunteers, cardiovascular measures such as blood pressure and heart rate decreases when in the presence of a cat.
The reduction is also more consistent and larger for owners at home than for let’s say volunteers at a cat rehoming centre.
With these results of the study to be published in peer reviewed scientific journal entitled ‘Pet Behaviour Science’, Filipa said: “I’ve always wanted to involve cats in my research. When I started looking into it, I realized there is still quite a vague area focusing on relationship between humans and pets. In particular, most research found focus more on dogs than cats.
“I was also interested in the aspect of bonding, since people see their pet in different ways. Even within the same house people behave differently to the same animal. So I kind of took it from here and started looking more into it. Then we had the idea of comparing cat owners with volunteers at a rescue center and that is how things started.”
While generally coming home to a cat may reduce systolic blood pressure, it also appears that the more the owner loves the cat, the more relaxed they will be.
Results of the study suggest that having a cat in the home can be a healthy pleasure, particularly for those who have had one for longer than two years, and also raises an the possibility that it is the ‘family pet and the home environment’ that generates the health benefits and that tactile contact with a cat that is not very familiar, for example in a work environment, yields fewer health benefits.
Filipa added: “Since this is a difficult area to assess and there is always different influential factors (e.g. lifestyle, health status, place where research take place, etc), I think further research should refine their methods to be able to improve the measure of the effects, of the relationship between humans and cats.”
Programme Manager for the BSC in Applied Zoology, Thais Martins, who supervised and co-authored the study, also added: “This is a tremendous demonstration of the high level of research being conducted by our students during their time at Cornwall College Newquay. This body of evidence raises some interesting possibilities and I’m delighted that Filipa has thought about how she could further her research.”