Study suggests cats too are left or right-handed, like humans

A new study has revealed that just like humans, cats too can be left or right-handed or more precisely ‘paw-ed’, based mostly on their genders.

The study, carried out by researchers at Queen’s University Belfast, suggests that female cats most likely use their right paw to reach out for food or to take a step down whereas, male cats prefer to use their left paw, indicating various brain structures of these little animals. The lead author Deborah Wells said, “The findings point more and more strongly to underlying differences in the neural architecture of male and female animals.”

The study was carried out on 24 males and 20 female cats in their own houses studying their normal day to day lives. Though there were paw preferences during usual lives, no such preferences of sleeping either on left or ride side were observed while the cats were asleep, reported Daily Mail.

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The findings published in Animal Behavior showed that the preferences differed on what the animals were doing; 73% showed biasness while reaching out for food, 70% showed while stepping down, and 66% showed when stepping over.

Researchers believe that these findings can shed light to understand the pets better and how they react to stress. “Left-limbed animals, which rely more heavily on their right hemisphere for processing information, tend to show stronger fear responses, aggressive outbursts, and cope more poorly with stressful situations than animals that are right-limbed and rely more heavily on their left hemisphere for processing,” explained Wells.

The findings demonstrated that while cats on the whole do not have a paw preference, unlike humans, where about 90% of people are right-handed, but individual cats do tend to have a dominant paw probably by gender influence, as per The Guardian.

However, the reason of these paw preferences are still a mystery. Wells said, “What is explaining this difference, we just don’t know. There is something going on with differences between the brain structure and function, clearly, of male and female animals, but as to the specifics, we just don’t know yet.”