Summary: According to a recent study, domestic cats can differentiate between their owners’ and a stranger’s taste by their own senses only. When given scent samples from both familiar and unfamiliar people, cats regularly spent more time sniffing the new scent.
This behaviour suggests that cats does understand and discover new people in the same way that they do with other cats. Right-to-left ear shifts were also observed in the study, giving rise to mental hemisphere preferences during scent analysis.
Important Information
- Fragrance Discrimination: Cats sniff new human odors more frequently than they do common ones, suggesting recognition.
- Mental Hemisphere Use: Cats first used the correct ear for fresh smells before switching to the left as the population grew more familiar.
- Cognitive Insights: Female cats did not exhibit any variation in their sniffing behavior, whereas male cats did.
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According to a study published on May 28, 2025 in the open-access journal, PLOS One, and by Yutaro Miyairi and colleagues at Tokyo University of Agriculture, Japan, cats spend more time sniffing the scent of a man than that of their landlord. This suggests that they can detect common humans based solely on smell.
Animals communicate with each other and identify another cats using their senses, but it has not been studied whether they can use smell to distinguish between different people.
The researchers looked into whether animals can tell a common person from a common person simply by looking at their surroundings. They gave thirty domestic cats swabs that had been rubbed between the toes of their owner or a man they had not met and were presented with cheap tubes containing the swabs.
The cat spent much longer sniffing unidentified smells than their owners or clear tubes.
Cats were first more likely to sniff unfamiliar smells with their right nostril, according to the researchers, but as they grew more aware of it, they later switched to their left nostril.
To learn more about the character and connection between the participating cats, users were also asked to complete an online survey.
Male cats with paranoid personalities typically sniffed each tube repeatedly, whereas males with more sensible personalities generally sniffed the pipes more quietly. However, there was no influence of character on female cats ‘ behavior during the test.
Domestic cats can distinguish between familiar and unfamiliar people based on their scent, according to the findings, but it is not clear whether they can identify certain people based solely on odor.
Cats may prefer different hemispheres of their brains for various tasks, as has previously been demonstrated in various animals including dogs, fish, and birds, because they discovered that they preferred to evaluate fresh smells with their proper nostrils.
The writers add,” We advise that animals recognize people using their behavior.” Additionally, we observe distinctive rubbing ( marking ) behavior following sniffing, suggesting that cat sniffing may be an exploratory behavior that precedes rubbing of odor ( marking ) in cats.
Along with the hypothesis that” animals are able to recognize a particular person from smell cues,” this connection needs to be looked into.
About this information about science analysis and opinion.
Author: Hanna Abdallah
Source: PLOS
Contact: Hanna Abdallah – PLOS
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Classic research: Free of charge.
Hidehiko Uchiyama and colleagues ‘” Behavioral actions of domestic cats to human smell” are published in. PLOS One
Abstract
Domestic cats ‘ behavioral responses to people scent
People from all over the world live with animals, and cats have a lot of social tendencies toward their owners.
One of the most crucial tactile traits of animals is olfaction, but it’s not clear whether it can recognize people. We used ethological techniques to assess the role and features of olfaction in the prejudice of known or unknown people by cats in this review.
It was investigated whether cats ‘ handedness of nostrils was a result of a variety of scent stimuli, exposure experience, and other factors.
A known person ( owner ), an unknown person ( owner ), and a blank control were all used to simultaneously stimulate cats.
Through questionnaires, cat owners responded to the responses to the cat-owner relationship scale ( CORS ) and the feline five.
It was observed that cats spent significantly more time sniffing an unknown person’s scent than a known person’s, which suggests that they were able to distinguish between heterospecific ( human ) individuals.
The cat displayed marked lateralization in the use of one ear or another while responding to smell impulses from mysterious people.
The second taste the kitty sniffed among known, mysterious, and blanks and the character score had an association. Male cats ‘ character results were significantly correlated with the frequency of repeating sniffing smells.
The cat’s actions and the cat-owner marriage report did not appear to have any relationship.
The olfactory exploration and subsequent rubbing ( odor-marking ) behavior in cats is suggested by the observation of rubbing of their faces against an object immediately after sniffing it.
However, this connection and the idea of whether cats can distinguish a person from smell cues warrant further analysis.
