Finally, these studies prove something worthy of reporting!
And the time has come to stop trying to convince your dog-lover friends that your cat doesn’t hate you by sharing interesting stories of that one time Fluffers sat on your legs or the time you pet Cupcake and she didn’t slink away.
IMAGE: WANG HE/GETTY IMAGES
Now we are able to prove our cats love us with science!
Brand new research from Oregon State University, published on Friday in Behavioural Processes, declares that cats enjoy human contact more than they like eating.
It’s true! Our cats like hanging out with their humans more than they like eating.
The authors of this brand new study wrote that cats are often seen as not especially sociable or trainable because there is a “lack of knowledge of what stimuli cats prefer, and thus may be most motivated to work for.”
IMAGE: SEAN GALLUP/GETTY IMAGES
In order to smash the widespread “cats are antisocial assh*les” myth, researchers subjected them to a series of various tests to prove what they would choose in different situations.
They took a total of 50 cats from both shelters and people’s homes and deprived them of food, human contact, scent, and toys for a few hours. They then went ahead and reintroduced stimuli in these four categories to see which the cats chose.
And the cats have spoken: Most of the fur balls preferred human socialization over any of the other categories.
Do you think this cat likes humans? │IMAGE: SEAN GALLUP/GETTY IMAGES
The authors of the study went on to write, “While it has been suggested that cat sociality exists on a continuum, perhaps skewed toward independence, we have found that 50% of cats tested preferred interaction with the social stimulus even though they had a direct choice between social interaction with a human and their other most preferred stimuli from the three other stimulus categories”.
So, there you have it! You can finally stop buying your cat’s love with expensive food or fancy toys because it just wants you for you.
And all you dog owners and cat haters will just have to get over it!
H/T: The Telegraph │ Via: mashable.com
