If you ever wondered who the freeloaders in your home were going to be, we finally have an answer. 1) Your teenagers, who are emptying your pantries into their cavernous maws every night after you go to bed and 2) your husband, who “just wants a bite” of anything you’re eating, although he’ll claim he doesn’t count because he actually contributes to the mortgage. But the other moocher under your roof is Whiskers! UC Davis’ School of Veterinary Medicine just concluded a study showing that, unlike most species in captivity, cats prefer a free, unearned meal over having to work for it. When given the choice of a tray of food available for the taking and a food puzzle in which they have to earn their repast, our feline friends will visit the buffet almost every time.
Humans aren’t the only animals who delight in free food; cats love getting chow in exchange for nothing too.
A new study from researchers at the University of California, Davis, School of Veterinary Medicine, published in the journal Animal Cognition, has found that cats prefer to get free meals over working for their food.
While this may seem like a no-brainer to some, researchers say the results are surprising because many animals, including other pets, enjoying performing tasks to get food — an act known as “contrafreeloading,” according to the study.
Working with a group of 17 domesticated cats, researchers presented the felines with an easily accessible tray of food and a simple-to-solve food puzzle. They found that most of the cats opted for the tray, even those with food puzzle experience.
“There is an entire body of research that shows that most species including birds, rodents, wolves, primates — even giraffes — prefer to work for their food,” the study’s lead author, Mikel Delgado, a cat behaviorist and research affiliate at UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, said in a release from the school. “What’s surprising is out of all these species, cats seem to be the only ones that showed no strong tendency to contrafreeload.”
As the article suggests, the fact that cats don’t want to work for food isn’t all that shocking to us fellow free-feeding humans. Don’t get me wrong, I’d play a real-life, with-weapons version of chess for a freshly baked stack of chocolate chip cookies, but only if there wasn’t an unrestricted one sitting next to me. I can tell you from personal experience that a cat will find any free food available, though. Especially if it is your lunch on your desk. Those lighting fast leeches will have their paws in your pasta before you know what flew past you.
The part I was surprised by is how many other animals choose contrafreeloading. Apparently, I’m not alone as it’s only recently been noted and become a subject of study. I do find it curious that cats, who are such gifted and strategic hunters, would be the first group to say “forget it” once they’re locked up. Maybe the the puzzles are too easy for them?
This is a weird side note but I used to date a guy who went to UC Davis Vet Med. I’ve never met anyone more into their area of study. He’d start every conversation with some weird animal fact and sometimes incorporated them into his answering machine messages, “Hey babe – guess how a frog can kill you?!” “I’ll call back later, I’m still getting over the tensile strength of a goat’s back leg.” I really hope he’s happy and surrounded by many amazing animals.
Photos credit: Anna Kumpan, Felice Wolke, Fernando Jorge and Timo Volz on Unsplash
