As any dearie owner will narrate you , the loss of a furry friend can betotally devastatingbut what about the other way of life round ? Well , young research has look deeper into the excited response of our feline fellow when other pets in the family pass along away and asks the question : do cats grieve ?
investigator conducted a survey on century of cat owner about the reaction from their PET when another creature ( either a cat or a dog ) in the household died . Over 400 people take part in the survey , which bring out spectacular similarities between computerized axial tomography behaviour and what most people would consider lamentation .
The study present that for more prescribed relationship between the associate brute and the pet that pop off , there was a decrease in playing , kip , and eating in the companion after the death . The results also reveal that the more metre the fellow fauna had lived with the deceased , the more the owners feel that the survive pet seek out attending from them after the other pet passed away .
In another sad turn , the caregiver who themselves experienced a gamey level of heartache were more potential to cover increase in nap , time spend alone , and hiding behavior in the surviving positron emission tomography after the decease .
The squad suggests caution when impute human emotions onto animals , for example they could be dally less because they no longer have another pet to play with .
In the wide beast universe , elephant , dolphins , andchimpanzeeshave all been chance to be affect by the death of an animal within their group , with some suggestion that elephant mayeven grip funeral .
Overall , the squad reason that cats may experience the loss of another dearie in the household in a similar personal manner to dogs , seek out human contact more often . The author suggest that this could direct to change in the idea that cats are upstage and asocial .
" For me , the most compelling determination is that when cats were report to change their behavior in ways that would be reproducible with what we would expect for grief , ” Jennifer Vonk , an Oakland University psychology prof who co - authored the paper , toldNPR , “ it ’s foretell by thing like the duration of time that the animals lived together or the amount of time that they had spent together charter in various activities or the quality of their relationships . ”
" peradventure it ’s more likely than I thought before that cat do have those feelings . "
The paper is published inApplied Animal Behaviour Science .
