Posted on 08/13/2021 7:02:57 PM PDT by BenLurkin
When given the choice between a freely available meal and a meal trapped inside a puzzle, scientists have found most animals, such as dogs, bears, pigeons, pigs, goats, mice, rats, monkeys and other primates, prefer to work for their food - a concept known as contrafreeloading.
When researchers provided a small sample of indoor cats with a food puzzle and a tray of food in a home environment, the pets ate more food from the free tray than from the puzzle. Even the most energetic individuals preferred to stick to the easy meal, according to activity sensors they wore during the study.
Eight cats never even bothered to touch the puzzle, despite having the opportunity to do so for 30 minutes, and none of the cats ate more food from the puzzle than from the open tray.
The results add weight to the findings from a small lab study, conducted in 1971...
In this historic experiment, six domesticated cats were trained to operate a food dispenser. They were then given the choice between the food puzzle and a free bowl of kibble in a laboratory setting.
Unlike every other animal that had been tested in similar ways, the cats in these experiments showed a clear preference for the free meal.
Now, it seems like even in a home setting, these creatures make the same choices, regardless of their sex, age or previous puzzle experience.
Beyond simple curiosity, researchers say it's worth finding out why cats do not seem to prefer a food puzzle over a free meal. The answer could help us appease the curiosity of our cats when they are stuck indoors, to increase their wellbeing all around.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencealert.com ...
They might not consciously know what a mouse is, but they would ‘know’ what to do with a mouse if they ever actually encountered one.
There are instincts that domestication doesn’t overcome.
On the other hand, sometimes animals are weird. For many years, I had an Eastern Painted Turtle in an aquarium. He was a happy turtle, but I worried about his nutrition.
Someone suggested that I give him a cricket now and then, so I got one, and threw it into the aquarium, thinking that Margareto would go for it.
Next thing I knew, cricket was up on the basking rock drying itself off, while turtle was swimming around looking panicked and afraid to get up on his rock. He’d never seen a cricket, and it freaked him.
(But I’d never compare a turtle brain with a cat brain...)
Clearly cats are NOT liberals.
That came out wrong, No NOT
Silly researchers. Cats are gods. They don’t do stupid puzzles.
Mine won’t even fly at leftover food or cold. They will wait for a fresh can and watch until it gets opened.
We always knew they were freeloaders...and we STILL love ‘em.
I am but a pawn in my cat’s quest for
global domination....
I never considered how my cat wanted to eat, when I owned a cat. There’s the food. Eat it or don’t.
“Daisy just wants on time.”
Animal’s internal time clock is just a shade off the Atomic Clock.
Cats aren’t stupid. But they don’t want you to know it.
“Now, if you’re willing to study the carbon footprint of cats you can get a $5 million taxpayer grant.”
For $5 million I’ll study the hell out of the carbon footprint of the domesticated feline.
And I can write gobbledygook with the best of them. Write it in English, have Google translate it into Russian, from Russian to Latvian, Latvian to Farsi, Farsi to Chinese then back into English.
It’ll make more sense than anything put out by the CDC or the climate idiots.
Dogs will wander off with whoever feeds them. They NEED owners.
Cats are just...over it.
I chose hungry over hash when I was about 6-7 years old.
I can still remember the shocked looks on my parent’s faces as they looked at each other and realized I really did HATE hash.
Years later my mom told me that when a kid would rather go hungry than eat something, that’s when she knew they really did hate it.
I was never forced to eat that dog food again.
The cats were acting like it was the first food they’d seen in days. Which it probably was. Lots of people would let their cats go hungry for however long it took to make a cute video.
It’s not the worst thing in the world but I wouldn’t do it.
What you are talking about is most emphatically NOT cooking! That is nothing but re-heating, warming and /or “rethermalizing”
Actual COOKING involves FAR more than tossing whatever into the microwave.
Yes, he is pretty good. However, he has a pretty high bar to measure up to, because his predecessor was better than I gave her credit for, until a week after I had to put her down.
Quatorze was a killing MACHINE when it came to rodents. I gave her a home ONLY because she was so hungry she was trying to catch a rabbit BIGGER than she was.
I always referred to her as my “FREE” $300 cat, even though I nearly got evicted from my apartment because of her. Long story.
I didn’t realize how bad the rodent issue was in the area until a week after losing her, when a rat casually walked across my fireplace directly in front of me.
I utterly LOATHE rats, especially inside my house.
Long, boring not very newsworthy tale about Don and cats.
Absolutely. Consider the evidence. Cats are independent minded and can usually survive on their own. They tend to carry concealed weapons. They are not willing to suffer fools easily and will defend what is theirs. They are generally clean about their persons. They raise their own children. Most often, they are quiet and civil. I’d say they are quite conservative.
Dogs are like RINOs… always needing to be loved.
Seventeen-Year Locusts are Progressive Democrats, it’s their nature to eat everything… except other Seventeen-Year Locusts.
If the actions of your dog embarrass you, perhaps you have the problem?
Dogs are the most down-to-earth, honest creatures G_d ever created.
My mom’s line, other than the threat of “eat it or go to bed hungry” was “Be glad you have this food when all those starving children in {name country de jour here} would love to have it instead of you!”, especially if i did not eat everything on my plate. One day, after a particularly odious serving of what she said was delicious fried sheep’s brain, which looked worse than it tasted, i picked up my plate after she used that line for starving kids in India, and said “OK! Here, send it to them! I cant eat another bite!” I was seven…
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