Introduction
Some behaviors in domestic cats suggest that interactions between them can be friendly, aggressive, or something in between, according to researchers in a report published on January 26, 2023, in Scientific Reports.
Cat behavior expert Mikel Delgado from Feline Minds, a cat behavior consulting company in Sacramento, California, who did not participate in the study, says, “It’s a question we hear a lot from cat owners, so I was excited to see researchers tackling this topic.”
Scientists have studied social relationships in cats – both with other cats and humans – but it can be difficult to know whether two cats are playing or fighting, according to veterinary researcher and cat behaviorist Noema Gajdoš-Kmeťková from the University of Veterinary Medicine and Pharmacy in Košice, Slovakia.
Sometimes cat owners miss signs of a tense relationship because they think their pets are just playing, which can lead to stress and illness in the animals; she says that sometimes cat owners regroup their pets after realizing that their animals are fighting.
Interactions Between Cats
To assess and classify interactions, Gajdoš-Kmeťková and her colleagues watched about 100 videos of different cats interacting in pairs. After watching about a third of the videos, Gajdoš-Kmeťková identified six types of behaviors, including fighting and stillness. She then viewed all the videos and noted how often each cat exhibited each of the identified behaviors and how long they lasted. By performing statistical analyses on the behaviors, she classified three types of interactions between cat pairs: play, aggression, and intermediate.
To confirm the results, other team members also watched the videos and categorized each interaction between the cats.
Some clear correlations emerged. For example, quiet fighting indicates a time of play, while chasing, yowling, and hissing or growling signal aggressive encounters.
The intermediate interactions contained elements of both playful and aggressive interactions but specifically included prolonged activity of one cat toward the other, such as jumping on the other cat or grooming it. These intermediate interactions can indicate that one cat wants to keep playing while the other does not, as the more playful cat gently nudges the other to see if its partner wants to continue, according to the authors.
Gajdoš-Kmeťková states that this work provides an initial insight into cat interactions, but it is not the end. In the future, she plans to study more nuanced behaviors, such as ear movements and tail flicks. Both Gajdoš-Kmeťková and Delgado emphasize that one contentious interaction does not necessarily indicate a catastrophic relationship between the cats.
Gajdoš-Kmeťková says, “It’s not just about one interaction; cat owners really need to look at the various and multiple interactions over different periods in their cats’ lives and then put it in context.”
Conclusion
Some behaviors in domestic cats suggest that interactions between them may be friendly, aggressive, or something in between. To determine the nature of these interactions, researcher Noema Gajdoš-Kmeťková and her team watched videos of cats interacting in pairs and classified these interactions into three types: play, aggression, and intermediate. The study found that quiet fighting indicates playtime, while chasing, yowling, and hissing or growling signify aggressive encounters. Intermediate interactions involve prolonged activity of one cat towards the other and may suggest that one cat wishes to continue playing while the other does not want to. The researchers stress that multiple interactions over different periods in the cats’ lives should be analyzed to determine the nature of their relationship.
Source: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/cats-play-fighting-aggression-tell
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