Scientists use YouTube videos of cats to analyze animal behavior

Veterinarians conducted research to look for ways to better identify when cats are playfully fighting or about to get into a more serious conflict. For this, the cScientists watched several videos of the cats at various times.

Altogether, the researchers collected 165 videos, with 63 clips uploaded by owners and the other 102 downloaded from YouTube. After a pre-selection and removal of the muted recordings, 105 productions with 210 cats remained.

The person responsible for the research, the veterinary doctor and doctoral student at the University of Veterinary Medicine and Pharmacy in Košice, Slovakia, Noema Gajdoš-Kmecová, said that she is passionate about cats and has always been curious about their behavior.

One of the curiosities of Noema was to know if your cats are playing or fighting. Although some researchers have begun to study this type of feline behavior, it remains an underexplored topic.

The research concluded thatWhen cats are noisy with each other, for example, they probably don’t like each other. On the other hand, when felines fight for long periods of time without sound or any apparent injury, it is likely play.

Something highlighted is that this type of behavior that seems to be playing is more common in young cats or kittens, in addition to other behaviors such as lie on their backs, chase and attack each other, or approach and care for each other.

The scientist also observed that the attitudes of cats towards each other are not immutable. Therefore, even if felines sometimes fight, this does not necessarily mean that their relationship with each other is ending, for example.

If the cats are regularly rubbing up against each other, sleeping in close contact, sharing resources and greeting each other with pricked ears, she says, then an occasional disagreement is probably not a cause for concern.

For Gajdoš-Kmecová and her colleagues, this study is just the beginning of solving what she calls the “cat interactions conundrum”. They are already planning a new research in collaboration with scholars of the subject from Belgium.

“I am very excited to continue this study with a growing team of researchers because I know there is much to reveal about the intraspecific social behavior of cats,” wrote the scientist.