Cats Prefer Freely Available Food over Food that Requires Effort, Study Says
By Science
News Staff / Source
In
a new study published in the journal Animal
Cognition, a team of cat behaviorists tested for the first time
whether domestic cats (Felis catus) living in homes would
contrafreeload; the authors did not find strong evidence for contrafreeloading;
instead, cats preferred to eat the food that was freely available with no
required additional effort.
“Contrafreeloading
is the willingness of animals to work for food when equivalent food is freely
available,” said Dr. Mikel Delgado,
a cat behaviorist in the Department of Medicine and Epidemiology at the
University of California, Davis, and Feline Minds, and her colleagues.
“This
behavior is observed in various captive and companion species, including wild
or domesticated animals housed in sanctuaries, zoos, laboratories and homes.”
“Species tested include humans, chimpanzees, macaques, chickens, jungle fowl, pigeons, grizzly bears, maned wolves, rats, giraffes, and pigs.”
“However,
previous research found that six laboratory cats failed to contrafreeload.”
“We
hypothesized that cats would contrafreeload in the home environment when given
a choice between a food puzzle and a tray of similar size and shape,” they
said.
“We
also hypothesized that more active cats would be more likely to
contrafreeload.”
In
the study, the researchers provided 17 domestic cats a food puzzle and a tray
of food.
The
puzzle allowed the cats to easily see the food but required some manipulation
to extract it.
Some
of the cats even had food puzzle experience.
“It
wasn’t that cats never used the food puzzle, 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 puzzle,” Dr. Delgado said.
Cats
that were part of the study wore activity monitors. The study found that even
cats that were more active still chose the freely available food.
“Our
study should not be taken as a dismissal of food puzzles,” Dr. Delgado said.
“Just
because they don’t prefer it, doesn’t mean they don’t like it.”
“Why
cats prefer to freeload is also unclear,” she added.
“The
food puzzles used in the study may not have stimulated their natural hunting
behavior, which usually involves ambushing their prey.”
_____
M.M.
Delgado et al. Domestic cats (Felis catus) prefer freely
available food over food that requires effort. Anim Cogn, published
online July 26, 2021; doi: 10.1007/s10071-021-01530-3