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Why cats are crazy for catnip

sciencemag.org

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Re: Why cats are crazy for catnip

#101

Post by dalbasal »

pushrax wrote: post #88
dalbasal wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some sort of drug is usually acceptable culturally. Alcohol, very widely. Cannabis, more recently. Mild drugs like coffee. "Prescribed recreationals" like xanax in some circles. In many places Hashish or opium are still seen as traditional/acceptable. I grew up in Israel, where qat is legal, seen as equivalent to coffee and culturally acceptable. It's fairly common as an ornamental plant. Giving your cat whiskey woul…

As far as anyone knows, catnip is completely nontoxic to cats, but ethanol certainly is toxic. Cats also simply don't like the smell of alcohol. Eating very large quantities of catnip can give them gastrointestinal discomfort though.

Sure, I wasn't recommending it. I'm just pointing out that it's culturally acceptable to give cats catnip. Culture happens, and sometimes it's rational. Sometimes it's not.

Re: Why cats are crazy for catnip

#102

Post by gwern »

code_duck wrote: post #19
dirtyid wrote: post #15

New cat utterly unresponsive to catnip, wonder if defective. Have never encountered a cat that didn't go cray for the nips until now. Last cat was so into it, I worried whether she experienced withdraw symptoms. Literature on that is pretty mixed though.

Speaking to an Australian friend, I learned that 25% of cats don't respond to catnip at all - or cat mint, as they call it. Apparently the branch of the cat family in Australia are ones that don't have the catnip genes, so she had never witnessed a cat acting crazy in the characteristic cat way. My previous cats did two different things - one would instantly flop down and roll in the catnip, then lazily lick it off h…

I've compiled all of the reported catnip studies and run some large-scale surveys of my own: https://www.gwern.net/Catnip https://www.gwern.net/Catnip-survey

Globally, catnip immunity rates are closer to a third, but Australia is at the extreme with about half cats not responding.

Villani 2011 https://www.gwern.net/docs/catnip/2011-villani.pdf establishes that catnip response is highly heritable but polygenic (not Mendelian), and to a first approximation, no one studies cat genetics - so it will be difficult to prove that there's some sort of founder effect on Australian/Mexican/Spanish cats causing a lower genetic propensity.

Re: Why cats are crazy for catnip

#103

Post by gwern »

eps wrote: post #95
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our cats are definitely more into valerian than catnip, they dive face first into the stuff, eat it, roll around in it, etc. With catnip, no reaction.

Valerian is the cat drug in my home country. Mentioned it once to a friend, a Canadian, and brought him a bit the next time I went back home for a visit. His cat had no reaction. Zero. But the catnip worked as expected.

That's a little surprising, since Bol et al 2017 (https://bmcvetres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12917-...), testing catnip/Valerian/silvervine/honeysuckle on ~100 cats, found that the response to each is correlated. (I get a tetrachoric correlation of 0.6 for catnip/valerian in my analysis: https://www.gwern.net/Catnip#optimal-catnip-alternative-sele... )

I think you probably just got unlucky there.

Re: Why cats are crazy for catnip

#104

Post by q845712 »

rpiguyshy wrote: post #67

i recently moved into a house with some other people. they have cats which they have owned for many years. after living here for a while, i was sitting on the couch watching star trek with these people when one of the cats came up and sat on my lap. they were shocked. that cat didnt sit on any of their laps, ever. and they became a little jealous. this happens literally every time i take up residence with people who…

I went through the process of befriending a very timid/shy cat owned by a housemate and would largely agree. I'd say it differently, maybe "seek first to understand and then to be understood"?

But in learning how to befriend this "difficult" cat I really had to set aside all of my own agendas and ideas, and I learned something very generalizable about how to learn.

Re: Why cats are crazy for catnip

#105

Post by eps »

gwern wrote: post #103
eps wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valerian is the cat drug in my home country. Mentioned it once to a friend, a Canadian, and brought him a bit the next time I went back home for a visit. His cat had no reaction. Zero. But the catnip worked as expected.

That's a little surprising, since Bol et al 2017 ( https://bmcvetres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12917-... ), testing catnip/Valerian/silvervine/honeysuckle on ~100 cats, found that the response to each is correlated. (I get a tetrachoric correlation of 0.6 for catnip/valerian in my analysis: https://www.gwern.net/Catnip#optimal-catnip-alternative-sele... ) I think you probably just got unlucky there.

Possibly, but I do wonder if there's a difference between American and European cats as far as the drug response goes.

Re: Why cats are crazy for catnip

#106

Post by yks »

rpiguyshy wrote: post #67

i recently moved into a house with some other people. they have cats which they have owned for many years. after living here for a while, i was sitting on the couch watching star trek with these people when one of the cats came up and sat on my lap. they were shocked. that cat didnt sit on any of their laps, ever. and they became a little jealous. this happens literally every time i take up residence with people who…

while you are onto something, it also reads like "all my nieces love me and hate their parents because I am around to play with them and give them gifts but not around to force them eat the food they dislike"

Re: Why cats are crazy for catnip

#107

Post by selimthegrim »

Schiphol wrote: post #80
armada651 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're misreading that paragraph. It is specifically saying the euphoria is not the _only_ reason that cats roll around in catnip.

The "rather" connotes mutually exclusive alternatives, doesn't it? (I'm not a native speaker.)

"I had rather a good time."

Re: Why cats are crazy for catnip

#108

Post by svachalek »

Schiphol wrote: post #80
armada651 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're misreading that paragraph. It is specifically saying the euphoria is not the _only_ reason that cats roll around in catnip.

The "rather" connotes mutually exclusive alternatives, doesn't it? (I'm not a native speaker.)

Interesting, as a native speaker I am only familiar with it meaning mutual exclusion, with a range of connotations from "the former is the opposite of correct" to "let me adjust that thought slightly". However, Merriam-Webster supports my experience with the first 4 definitions and then drops a "but also" as the fifth. Sometimes I hate English.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rather

Re: Why cats are crazy for catnip

#109

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

de_nied wrote: post #70
leblancfg wrote: post #26

> Our findings suggest instead that rolling is rather a functional behavior. People smoke weed all the time and it decreases violence. But that’s not why they do it. Chances are just as good that the insect repellant is just a nice side effect of these cats getting high, not the other way around.

> People smoke weed all the time > and it decreases violence https://i.imgur.com/61JXtJ7.png

I mean, have you ever heard of someone high on THC acting belligerent? I sure haven't. Alcohol, meth, cocaine, bath salts, everything else, absolutely. Ask a cop how often he gets called for a DV issue because someone is drunk.

But weed? Nah. People on weed just want to eat pretzels and watch cartoons.

Re: Why cats are crazy for catnip

#110

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

leadingthenet wrote: post #53

Maybe this is a weird question, but why do people give drugs to their cats? Is it to see them have fun? Is it so the owners have fun? Is it good for them? I never quite understood why catnip was so socially acceptable when we view other drugs with such different eyes.

Yes, it is to see them have fun. The cats definitely appear to enjoy it. My cat has learned to recognize the sound of me opening the tub of catnip and will come running across the house to get some.

Good for them? Maybe. It's certainly not bad for them. This has been very much studied. Cats can't overdose on catnip. At worst, after 5-15 minutes of sniffing and rolling around in it, they stop responding to it.

> when we view other drugs with such different eyes.

Because most drugs humans take are harmful. The hard stuff like meth, cocaine, heroin, etc., is easy to overdose on. Alcohol can make some people belligerent and can easily be deadly. Tobacco causes cancer, among other things depending on how you consume it. Marijuana is the least harmful, but as far as I'm concerned, the jury is still out on whether or not it's as harmless as people think it is, especially if smoked.

But catnip? It's completely harmless. The cat will sniff or eat it, roll around in it, and appears to experience euphoria, but there are no health dangers in it.

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