Cats distinguish their owner’s scent from stranger’s, study finds

Domestic cats can explain the difference between the smell of their owner and the difference between a stranger, showing a new study.

The study of Tokyo University of Agriculture found that cats spent a lot of time to smell tubes with an odor of unknown people compared to tubes with their owner’s smell.

This suggests that cats can discriminate between familiar and unfamiliar humans based on their smell, but it is not clear that they can identify specific people.

Cats are known to use their strong sense of smell to identify and communicate with other cats, but researchers had not yet studied whether they could also use it to differentiate between people.

Previous studies of human recognition by cats have shown that they are able to differentiate between voices, explain gaze to find someone’s food, and change their behavior according to a person’s emotional state which is recognized through their smell.

in study Published on WednesdayResearchers presented 30 cats with plastic tubes, with either a swab with their owner’s smell, a swab containing the smell of the person of the same gender as their owner who they had never met, or a clean swab.

The smell was rubbed between the smell below the side, behind the ear, and between the owner or stranger’s leg.

Researchers stated that cats spent a lot of time to smell the smell of unknown people compared to their owner or empty tube, suggesting that they could discriminate between the smell of familiar and unfamiliar people.

The idea of ​​smelling an unknown excitement for a long time has been shown in cats first – smelling kittens sniffing unidentified female cats for a long time compared to their mothers.

However, researchers warned that it could not be concluded that cats can identify specific people such as their owner.

“The smell stimulation used in this study was only known and unknown individuals,” said Hidhiko Uchiyama, one of the study writers.

“Behavior experiments in which cats are presented with many known-individual odor stimuli, will be required, and we will need to find specific behavior patterns in cats that only appear in response to the odor of the owner.”

A researcher from Bari University Serenela D’Gio, who was not involved in this study, but who has studied cat’s reactions to human smells also said that the results also reacted to Kat differently to familiar and unfamiliar smells, but this conclusion could not be drawn on their inspirations.

“We don’t know how the animal felt while smelling … We do not know for example whether the animal was comfortable or stressful,” he said.

Ms. D’Gio said that the presentation of samples to cats by her own owners, who naturally enhanced her smell pair in the environment, enhanced the interest of cats in unfamiliar people.

“In that case, the owners present not only their visual appearance but also their smell,” he said.

“So definitely if they offer other smells that are different from their personal, then in a way they attach the cat more.”

The authors of the study concluded that “cats use their olfactory [smell] For the recognition of humans “.

He also noted that cats rubbed their face against the tubes after smelling – which cats do to mark their fragrance on something – indicating that the smell may be a searchful behavior that occurs before the marking of the smell.

Researchers warned that this relationship requires further investigation, as well as with the principle whether cats can identify a specific person with their smell.