A Michael Broad Blog
It is no surprise to me and perhaps others that both domestic dogs and cats have smaller brains than their wild cousins from whom they have descended: the grey wolf for dogs and the Eurasian wildcat for cats. The reason is obvious: domestication, which has removed the challenges for survival and the lesser need …
Scientists have looked into whether wild cats are smarter than domestic cat. Their study is entitled: “Are domesticated animals dumber than their wild relatives? A comprehensive review on the domestication effects on animal cognitive performance.” I discuss the study below and start off with a general discussion on the difficulties in making a comparison. …
ESP stands for extrasensory perception. A sixth sense. Paranormal activity! It is being able to perceive something with the mind and not with the recognised physical senses. Whether you believe that domestic cats have ESP or not will be a very personal choice. Some people will believe it. I respect their points of view. …
Do domestic cats sometimes defecate when they are scared such as when on the veterinarian’s consultation table? The answer quite definitely is yes. I have personal experience of this when I took my then three-legged black, male cat to the vet because of what transpired to be a tumour behind his eye. He was …
Do cats have the quickest reflexes of all land-based mammals? The research on this topic it a little bit sketchy but strong anecdotal evidence does indeed point to the fact that cats have the quickest reflexes. I’m going to rely at least partly on videos on TikTok showing cats attacking snakes. It allows me …
Extreme flat-face Persian cats are, according to a research paper carried out in 2017 by German scientists, equivalent to children suffering from a condition called coronal craniosynostosis. This is a rare condition where a baby’s skull does not grow properly causing an irregular head shape. I would suggest in fact that the abnormality of …
People and animals need working memory in order to function properly. This is the part of short-term memory concerned with immediate conscious perceptual processing. Another definition is: a limited capacity store for retaining information for a brief period while performing mental operations on that information. It allows us to interact with the world as …
A cat’s tail is all three of the above. It is made up of bone, muscle, blood vessels and nerves just like the other parts of a domestic cat’s body. It is no more or less sensitive than the other main areas of the cat’s body in my view. But clearly it should not …
