Tom Cat Buddies Closer than Female Friendships
The title needs a bit of explaining! It is difficult to compress some stories into a few words. This relates to multi-cat environments. We know that domestic cats and cats in feral cat colonies form relationships. Cats choose friends essentially and become social animals contrary to the perceptions of some people.
Well, research by scientists in 1999 (Barry and Cromwell-Davis) that examined the differences in social behavior of neutered, indoor cats, both female and male, discovered that male cats spend “more time in close proximity” (male to male friendships or associations) than females to females. I think that is interesting and deserves reporting on PoC.
Cat Buddies – Photo by J i J y
The scientists studied 60 pairs of cats (120 cats in total):
- 47 of the pairs of cats were not related;
- 20 pairs were both males;
- 20 pairs were both females;
- 20 pairs were female to male pairs.
All the cats were:
- neutered;
- between 6 months and 8 years of age;
- and had lived together for at least 3 months.
As a whole the cats:
- spent 50% of the time out of sight of each other;
- 25-31% of the observed time they spent together;
- spent 35% of the time within 3 meters of each other;
- and kept a distance of between 1-3 meters between each other;
The boys “spent more time in close proximity” (male to male) than the girls (female to female).
For 19% of the observed time boys were between 0 (in contact) to 1 meter from each other. The females were between 0 to 1 meter from each other for less than half that time (8.8% of observed time).
Here is the fun bit. The text that I have seen does not tell me if the scientists speculated why male cat friendships resulted in the cats being physically closer more often than the equivalent female friendships.
So, I’ll have to do it myself….It may have something to do with the pack animal nature of the male and I am referring to humans! Men tend to lean towards pack animal behavior and this may result in slightly closer male bonding.
Now over to you. If there are five suggestions as to the reason behind this behavior in comments, I will send a £20 or currency equivalent Amazon gift, of the person’s choice, to the person who makes the best suggestion. Other people can decide the best suggestion and I’ll try and be the final judge. Here comes trouble….. 🙂
Original photo on Flickr