Khaberni - Many cat owners encounter a common behavior of pets leaving their food even when offered favorite, high-quality meals, prompting scientists to seek the true reason behind this behavior.
According to a recent study from Iwate University in Japan, cats do not necessarily stop eating due to fullness; they might lose interest in food due to "boredom with the smell".
Professor Masao Miyazaki, the lead researcher of the study, explained that cats experience what is scientifically known as "olfactory habituation", meaning that with repeated exposure to the same scent, they gradually lose their desire to eat, even if they are not actually full.
The researcher noted, according to the "Daily Mail", that experiments showed a clear difference in eating behavior between cats and dogs, where dogs devour their meals quickly and completely, while cats tend to eat intermittently and leave and return to their food later.
To understand this phenomenon, the research team conducted multiple feeding experiments, where meals were presented to the cats at frequent intervals, and the amount of food consumed each time was recorded. The results indicated that the cats’ food consumption gradually decreases with repeated servings of the same meal.
However, the interesting part of the experiment was that changing the type of food or even just changing the scent led to an increase in the cats' food consumption again, indicating that "sensory renewal" plays a crucial role in stimulating their appetite.
Another experiment showed that simply adding a different scent to the food, even without changing its fundamental ingredients, was sufficient to encourage the cats to eat larger amounts.
The researchers believe that this behavior is due to the difference in evolutionary behavior between cats and dogs; dogs descend from hunters who depend on consuming large meals quickly, while cats evolved as solitary hunters depending on multiple small preys throughout the day.
Based on these results, the researchers suggest practical solutions to help cats suffering from poor appetite, especially those that are older or sick, by varying the scents or adding new ingredients to the food such as dried fish or supplements with different smells.
Special bowls can also be used that allow the introduction of various scents without changing the basic diet, which could help improve appetite and encourage cats to eat better.
The researchers confirm that understanding the role of the sense of smell in cat feeding could contribute to developing more effective ways to handle appetite loss issues in pets.
