Do domestic cats protect hens’ eggs because they know that they are fragile? The videos on TikTok might give this impression when you push the egg partly underneath them as we see in the video on this page. The videos can be interpreted in different ways depending on your beliefs. They are ambivalent.
In the videos, you could believe that the cats protect the eggs in a very uncommitted way but I think it is quite difficult to even see this in the cats’ behaviour. In the video on this page, the egg is placed right into the cat’s chest. It is as if the person is treating the cat as a hen 😊 who’s laid an egg.
The cat licks it perhaps because it smells interesting. They don’t kick the egg away. Normally with foreign objects of unknown origin domestic cat can sometimes be frightened because it may present to them as a hostile threat.
https://www.tiktok.com/@annafromtiktok/video/6840510510182501637
Clearly the egg does not seem like a hostile object to them so they are quite happy to leave it where it is. However, they are more or less ignoring the egg. Cats are able to sleep over uneven surfaces. They appear not to mind at all. My cat sleeps over cables and sometimes I think he even likes it. The bottom line is I don’t see any real evidence in the TikTok videos which convince me that they are being protective of them.
It has turned into a fad or trend. And TikTok has provided a voice-over which the video makers invariably use. You therefore have the same voice-over in all these videos with the owner placing the egg into the cat as closely as possible.
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As mentioned, in the video on this page the egg has been placed in such a way that it looks as if the cat is protecting it. If the woman had placed the egg 9 inches from the cat what would have happened? The cat probably would have ignored it in which case it could not be argued that the cat is protecting the egg.
Perhaps people are inadvertently engineering the outcome because it is an outcome that they want to see and expect? It might be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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There is no science that I know with supports the idea that domestic cats protect eggs. I did some research on the odour emanating from eggs. There may be something in the smell which is mildly attractive to cats. But there was nothing definitive which indicated to me that eggs have a scent attractive to cats. I was looking for a reason why cats be weakly interested in an egg. However, I don’t see a genuine interest in eggs in these videos.
My conclusion is that it’s a social media meme which has developed and people are creating videos with an expected outcome and then encouraging that outcome to happen by placing the egg against cats in a position which gives the impression that they are being protective of it. What do you think 🤔❓
Note: This is a video from another website which is embedded here. Sometimes they are deleted at source which stops them working on this site. If that has happened, I apologise but I have no control over it.
