“Lateralized behaviour” means left or right-handedness in scientific jargon. This is a brief follow up to an earlier post on the subject thanks to VG. VG is a scientist living in America and she is able to find and show me information I would not normally have easy access to. Thank you VG. In the earlier post I wrote that cats tend to be left-handed. I referred to a popular source – a book entitled: Play It Again, Tom by Augustus Brown.
The current information comes from a study from the School of Psychology, Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK by Deborah L. Wells and Sarah Millsopp.
In the study, the way 42 domestic cats used their paws was assessed.
The results were different depending on the test and their sex. The cats carried out three different tasks. I summarize the findings briefly.
Task One – getting a food treat out of a glass jar – complex task
This was considered to be a complicated task. Under these circumstances the cats showed a preference for one paw over the other. However, overall, there wasn’t a trend towards one side.
- 20 cats favoured their left paw
- 21 cats favoured their right paw
- 1 cat was ambidextrous.
The result was significant and beyond what would be expected by chance. It seems that cats are more skilled with one paw than the other but overall there is an equal preference between right and left.
- Male cats were more likely to use their left paw.
- Female cats were more likely to use their right paw.
My comment: when the task was more complicated a preferred paw was used and the preference was sex related.
Task Two – cat toy, a fabric mouse was suspended over head of cat
All the cats used their paws ambidextrously.
Task Three – cat toy, a fabric mouse was dragged away from cat on string
All the cats used their paws ambidextrously.
My Conclusion
It seems that cats are much more ambidextrous than humans. However, they do have a forepaw that is more coordinated than the other, which is called into use when the task is more demanding.
There are far more left-handed cats than left-handed people. Although that is misleading because left-handed cats are far less strongly left-handed than humans. Cats favour one side when pushed.
It seems that about 50% of cat favour the left paw compared to about 10% of people. The sex of the cat has a huge influence on left and right handed bias.
Don’t trust popular books for scientific information on the cat!
Yep, that little chipmunk took us both on and won. He must have been feeling great about himself.