Cat Body Language & Stress Signals with Dr. Serenella d'Ingeo

Your cat is “telling you” what they feel. The problem is that most of us are listening with the wrong cues. I sit down with Professor Serenella d'Ingeo, an animal physiology and behavior researcher, to unpack what the science of feline communication actually says and why humans routinely miss stress signals that are right in front of us.

We talk about why cats can seem aloof or unreadable compared with dogs, including their different domestication history and the fact that cats are facultatively social. From there, we dig into research findings that are a little uncomfortable but incredibly useful: people are only slightly better than chance at identifying whether a cat is relaxed, tense, or fearful, and the observer’s characteristics and experience can matter more than the cat’s behavior itself. If you live with an indoor cat whose environment depends on you, that gap in understanding has real consequences for welfare, chronic stress, anxiety, and behavior problems.

Then we get practical with cat body language and petting consent. We break down what to watch across the whole body, how pupil size can be an early indicator of arousal, and why “staying still” during petting is not the same as enjoying it. I also share an easy tool for cat parents: record your petting sessions on your phone and replay them to catch the tiny moment your cat says “enough” before it turns into petting aggression.

We also explore multicat household dynamics and when to intervene, plus one of the most fascinating studies on cat scent and brain lateralization, including a nostril preference linked to stress processing. If you care about cat behavior, feline stress signals, and building a calmer home, hit play, subscribe, and share this with a fellow cat person, then leave a rating or review so more listeners can find the show.

Transcript

Why Cat Signals Get Missed

Kristiina Wilson 0:00

Hello and welcome to another episode of Hits and Tell. I am your host, Kristiina Wilson, cat behaviorist. So cats are constantly communicating with us, and the problem is that we can be really bad at listening. So in this episode, I'm joined by Serenalla D'Ingeo to talk about the science of feline communication, why people struggle to recognize stress in cats, and how our cats may actually understand our emotions better than we understand theirs. We also get into cat body language, petting consent, multi-cat households, and one of the most fascinating studies that I have ever read involving cats and their nostril preference. All right, here we go. Hi, and welcome to another episode of Hiss and Tell. I'm your host, Kristiina Wilson, and with me today is Serinella D'ingeo, a professor of animal physiology and behavior at the University of Bari in Italy. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you for the invitation. Thank you so much for being here, and I hope that I said your name sort of right this time. You are great. It's only my 500th try. So can you tell me a little bit about yourself, what you do, what drew you into studying animal behavior and communication?

Serenella D'Ingeo 1:14

Well, actually, I started my research career in 2014, just after my graduation. And I've always been uh interested in animal behavior. Actually, it was kind of my passion till I was a child. So I feel very lucky to have this kind of work. And so I've collaborated with my research team on studies on animal behavior, and in particular, uh about animals living in street contact with humans, so mainly dogs, and uh recently also cats and uh donkey and horses. And we try to have a look on uh communication and uh human-animal interactions with a particular focus on also physiological um responses to communicative signals so it can include uh level hormonal levels but also cardiac and brain activity. Cool.

Domestication And Why Cats Seem Aloof

Kristiina Wilson 2:11

So what a stupid response. Cool. Doing great today. So I wanted to talk specifically about two of your studies that involve cats. So a lot of people still think of cats as kind of hard to read or aloof. What does the science, in your opinion, say about that?

Serenella D'Ingeo 2:29

Well, it's not that far from the reality, actually. In fact, uh I want to say that we um with my research team, and includes also Professor Quaranta and Professor Siniskalki, we started to have a look on um cat behavior and their relationship with humans in particular, because um we had experience in um human-animal interaction from a behavioral point of view, meaning uh uh that we also have a service in our university uh regarding cat uh behavioral uh veterinary service, actually. Yes. Nice. And so we had lots of cases of cats that uh had troubles in actually their living environment with humans and also other cats that live with them in the house. And so we understood from our direct experience that there is something that is still missing in the in communication from human to cats. Right. And maybe vice versa. Yeah. And so uh we started to deeply have a look on this, especially because we don't have, at least till now, a very huge piece of literature on uh on this. So on the ability of humans to read cats and vice versa. And I think that actually it is uh kind of related also to a specific feature of the biology of cats, meaning that in particular we have a different history of domestication of cats, right, respect with dogs, of course, have lived uh very close to us from uh thousands of years, between 20-40,000 of years. Instead, the cats are starting to live close to us from a shorter period, so it is estimated around 9,000 years. So we are less trained, or if we can say, from evolution to read cats. And on the other side, we also have to say that cats, differently to other animals that live in social group are facultative social animals. So they can live in social group if they have a kind of individual predisposition to live close to other cats, but also it really depends on the amount of resources that are available. If we consider that they can live or not live in social group, it really depends on several factors and the possibility to interact also develop the kind of communication that they have. And so, for instance, if we compare other social animals that live close to us, like dogs or horses, they developed more subtle emotional communication than cats that sometimes have just defensive or aggressive response, just to, you know, have a kind of very short interaction when they meet at the very perimeter of the of the area where they live. Right.

Kristiina Wilson 5:40

Do you think the average lay person would be better at reading a horse's signals then than a cat's communication signals? Well, that's and not like a horse person, but like a regular person. Yeah. Yeah. I just yeah. It just makes me curious about that because I I know with dogs we have at least self-selected, you know, or in breeding dogs, and because we've had this long relationship with them, we've also self-selected dogs that are most like us and that we can understand the most and sort of helped breed them throughout the years so that we've kind of arrived at the type of dog that we have now that we can easily communicate with or or read. And it's a little different with with cats, but I wonder, not to make this a horse podcast, but now that you've brought horses and donkeys into it, I'm also curious about I guess have we done the same with horses in your experience? Like where do they fall in the spectrum?

Serenella D'Ingeo 6:36

Well, I won't say that generally we are more able to beat horses than cats. Okay. But especially because actually they don't live very close to us in our apartment. Yes. Yeah, no. What?

Humans Misread Relaxed Versus Stressed Cats

Kristiina Wilson 6:51

I have so many horses in my apartment. Are you talking about people that had experience with goats in their house? So, you know, never know. I mean, that would certainly goats love to chew at everything. I don't know how you'd have furniture left. That's interesting. I don't know. You know, people sometimes. So in your study, you found that people were only slightly better than chance at recognizing whether a cat was relaxed or tense or fearful. Was that surprising to you? What did you think about the results of the study?

Serenella D'Ingeo 7:22

Yeah, in fact, as I was saying just before, I was not really surprised. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It was kind of confirmation, if I can say like this, because as I told you, we had different cases reporting really severe cases of cats uh having very deep, deep, deep consequences of uh chronic stress related to the fact that their management is not well regulated by humans. That is the I mean uh the most difficult part because, of course, if we for instance, here in Italy, we have this kind of tradition of uh hosting cats only in our apartment. So it's not really to have cats that can also access to open spaces. So of course, their their life is completely dependent on uh dependent on human. And so sometimes if we don't have the ability to read stressed signals, we condition their uh their lives really strongly. Yeah. So yes, in fact, it did not surprise me.

Kristiina Wilson 8:27

Yeah. That's too bad, but I I get it.

Serenella D'Ingeo 8:31

That's bad. Yeah. In a way, it's you know, give a scientific proof is a first step to try to understand what we can do to improve and to make their life be better than it is.

Kristiina Wilson 8:44

Yes. Exactly. So I think one of the more interesting findings that came out of that was that the observer characteristics mattered more than the cat's behavior itself. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Serenella D'Ingeo 8:56

Yeah, yeah. So we found actually in our uh um super recent study that people that identified as female um uh are more able to uh detect stress in cats, and also people that own the cat in their life, at least one, are more able to. And we found also a very slight difference regarding to the age. So younger people seem to be more able than older people. And well, regarding the gender, it has to be deepened because there are lots of studies also on other species, also wild species that show that females and women in general are more able, but we don't have data uh in this work related to the sex, so we cannot uh have any clear conclusion about the evolutionary process that could push in a way women to detect more easily uh the emotional signals. Instead, it's it is more clear the result about the the experience, so cat ownership versus cat uh cat who doesn't have or didn't have a cat, which which means that experience has a really profound effect. So living and observing cats and also how they interact and what are their reactions to our action have an effect on how we can interpret their behavior, their emotional signals. Yeah. And then, yes, also it is strictly connected, I think, also to the age difference because uh younger people are, you know, now there is a kind of trend on social media on cat videos. So I think it could be really related to this. People are really trained to look at cats and at a point start to it as a kind of uh real effect in their life, so start to be more and more trained and more able maybe to interpret and detect their uh emotional signals.

Kristiina Wilson 11:08

How much of that drop-off though also has to do with the drop-off that comes with age with visual acuity and for sure, other things, because cats, the signals are so small, right? Like they're so tiny that especially as you know, we're all aging, so it's not like as an aging person, we're all aging.

Speaker 3 11:27

Well, no.

Kristiina Wilson 11:29

But you know, my eyes are, you know, they get worse, and now I have to have reading glasses and other things. And so I just think, especially if you're an older person and you're perhaps fighting against these changes, and so you don't want to adjust your glasses or whatever that you have to do, maybe that is playing a part. Who knows? But I know that things of cats are so minute that certainly that that could play a part as well.

Serenella D'Ingeo 11:52

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I totally agree with you. And we also have to consider that there is a kind of cognitive impairment with age. Yes. And it is also stated for the interpretation of human signals too. So old people may have also the kind of the impairment in emotional communication with conspecific, so other humans too. Right.

Kristiina Wilson 12:13

Yeah. Yeah. I also I also wonder if older people who do have cats, like I love to drill down into data to look at like absolutely pointless things like this, but to look at like older people who do have cats to see if they've just fixated on their judgments and they're kind of like, this is what I think cats who are stressed looks like, and this they will not change their mind. So they're like very fixed into an idea because they're older and sort of inflexible. And if that plays a role, but again, that's just me.

Serenella D'Ingeo 12:43

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kristiina Wilson 12:44

You know, yeah, it could be wanting to look at things that are not what your study was looking at at all.

Serenella D'Ingeo 12:50

At the moment, but you know, in the future, yeah, it would be super interesting.

Stress Signals In Face Body Tail

Kristiina Wilson 12:54

Yes, yes, absolutely. So, what do you think the the real world consequences, obviously, that you've seen in in your clinic of people missing these kinds of early stress signals in cats are? And and also what are the stress signals that you were looking at in the study?

Serenella D'Ingeo 13:09

Regarding the second question, so which were the signals, we had a look on the entire uh body language. So we had the specific look and the facial expressions, so related to the changes in the eyes, in the mouth, in the ears position, together with the changes in body position and also tail position. This is because actually, when we interpret animal behavior in general and we want to investigate it, our ability actually, this I think it's really important to have, you know, like a really broad look at the entire visual communication. And we focus for the moment, and at least for this study, only on visual communication because actually it is the very first signal, very first channel that they use to communicate their emotions, which is then enriched also with uh vocalization, but when just when emotions get more intense. So we wanted to really have a look on this first step of communicating emotion to understand if we are able to detect the very first signals and to, um, of course, also uh, in a way, have a kind of action to modify the situation that causes the stress. And it is very important, in fact, I think, to one to understand if we are able or not, because we have a very, very deep influence on uh on cat uh uh living condition. Right. We are most of the time totally dependent on us. And so we have also this responsibility, I think, to make their life be the the the better the better.

Kristiina Wilson 14:57

We absolutely do. You're you're totally right. So in your view, what are the most uh dangerous misconceptions that people have about cat body language? Like, and do you think the gap in understanding contributes to problems?

Petting Consent And Preventing Bites

Serenella D'Ingeo 15:13

I think from my experience that the most missinterpreted signal, uh well, not just one, but a group of is related to the moment in which we pet cats. So um generally uh people start petting cats, and until the cat remains motionless, regardless of uh all the facial expression, we uh believe that cat enjoyed this. Right. But instead could be only related to kind of acceptance and not really, you know, like be a feeling of being really involved and uh enjoyed this. For instance, we could detect how they uh perceive this interaction, this physical interaction uh from the body posture, if it is, you know, really crouched or really relaxed, so no tension in the muscles, but also the position of the ears, also the eyes, if they are super soft, or we can detect the changes in diameter of uh pupils diameters, which you know could uh explain the activation of the cat. And so the cat is starting to be really excited, not very in a positive way, or the tail movement. If there is tail movement, the cat generally is not super confident. Right. Um, yes, I think this is uh what I generally see, but it refers actually not only to cats, unfortunately, but uh generally to all uh the pets in general. Sometimes we just uh are super focused on uh the benefit of petting our animals, but we need to also have a look on uh the other side if they enjoy too. I'm so critical, I'm sorry.

Kristiina Wilson 17:02

You're not you're not crit I you're not critical at all. I think this is totally right. And and I have to say, for all the the cases that I get of human-directed cat aggression, there's so many of bitey cats, and so many of them are coming from padding aggression. And the biggest tool that I think that people can do if they have this, that if they have this at home and they don't quite understand what their cat signals are, is to use their phone and just record their cat when they're patting them, and their cat will be telling them they they don't, there's a moment when they've had enough, right? Sometimes one of our cats just gave us like a side eye, she'd just be like, that's it, you know? And if we didn't recognize that, she thought she had given us a very clear signal that she was done. And if we didn't see that little eye movement, she'd give us a slap. And I think it can be so helpful for pet parents to video their cats and then be able to slow that down and look and see what was that signal that my cat gave me that I probably didn't pick up on, whether it was a lip lick or it was an eye movement or an ear movement or a specific tail movement, so that in the future, while they're petting their cats, they can see, oh, there's a signal, I'm gonna stop now so I don't get slapped or bitten or any of these issues that can often lead to relinquishment or you know, pet visits and and medication, other things like that that aren't necessary. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're you're right, absolutely.

Serenella D'Ingeo 18:25

Could be a very, very effective strategy, I think. Yeah, now we're self.

Kristiina Wilson 18:31

Yeah, is I think that's what's needed because I think almost all the time the cat thinks it's telling you. Like that they're like, I but I've said, you know, but it's just they're so minute, they're such tiny signals for us as people that it can be very hard to pick up unless we're looking.

Serenella D'Ingeo 18:46

Absolutely, absolutely. And also have some kind of guidelines to uh help us to understand what we have to look at.

Kristiina Wilson 18:55

Yes, exactly. Yeah, very, very true. So, so on that token, if you could teach people to look at one thing first when they were looking to assess their cat, what would it be?

Serenella D'Ingeo 19:07

Look at the eyes, the eyes, I think. Yeah. Yeah, because this is the very, very first change that we can detect. It's just super, super clear, I think, from the diameter, the pupil diameters. When it changes, it means, I mean, it becomes bigger. It means that cat is starting to be reactive. So it's ready to react to all the treats that are in the environment. So it means that it started to be not really comfortable in that situation. Of course, there are other conditions that can cause these uh changes that are related to lights. If it is uh really, really dark, uh, of course, we don't have to be worried about this because they have to just uh have the possibility to look at the environment. But and if they are super excited, but in a very positive way, we can detect it too. But this is the very, very, very first sign of stress that we can detect, and it's quite easy to detect it.

Kristiina Wilson 20:07

And do you think that for most I guess for most people at home, it's not gonna be. I always think that looking in a cat's eyes is so aggressive, but I guess for most people, if they're just quickly glancing a cat in the face, it's not aggressive.

Speaker 3 20:23

Your cat. Yeah, you know what people being like Yeah, yeah, it is a very, very uh strong.

Kristiina Wilson 20:31

A quick look. Don't take a flashlight and go No, otherwise it will be Yeah, exactly. But I think it's we've gotta maybe spell it out a little bit because people might be like, okay, we're gonna go really go look.

Speaker 3 20:44

No, no, no, we have to specify.

Cats Recognize Human Emotions

Kristiina Wilson 20:47

Yeah. Just a quick glance and not let's no staring contest with your cat because that's very rude in cat language. Sure, but it wouldn't be embarrassing. Yeah, don't embarrass your cat. That's so rude. That would be a funny list to make of like things you could do that would embarrass your cat, and definitely staring them in the face is is one of them. So your research shows that cats can recognize human emotional signals. What does that tell us about the cat and human bond?

Serenella D'Ingeo 21:22

Well, it means that cats are potentially more attuned than us to our emotional signals in general. And uh in our previous studies, we presented uh the emotional stimulus that are uh expressed by facial expression, human facial expressions together with uh our vocalization. So it means, for example, we presented uh uh uh uh happy faces of uh person smiling with the sound of uh laughing, and uh similarly people that show that is anger with uh a growth vocalization, so quite intense. Yeah. And we found that they are able to match this sound. So we presented the voices with the two faces, one anger face and a happy face. And we saw that they look longer to the matching face. Matching face, yeah. Yeah. And uh it means that they they know our emotion, they have a mental representation of our emotion, and so they could correctly match the sound with the face. Actually, also we found that they respond, respond efficiently to the meaning of the emotional content of uh these signals. And so they appear the more stressed when uh the voice of uh angry human is uh reproduced, and uh so they they correctly match with also the the face of uh yes, the angry human. And uh so it shows both that they have a mental representation of our emotion and they also respond properly to the content of the emotion. So it's it's very important because it means that they understand how how we feel and uh which are also the consequences of our emotions. So um if we are happy, uh of course they can feel more relaxed. If we are angry, they adjust their behavior and they prepare to escape, for instance. Yeah, yes. Uh so it's very important because it means that they communicate efficiently with us.

Kristiina Wilson 23:33

It it's a thought about the fact that that they're trapped in the house with us for most people who just have indoor only cats, and I think it it highlights the importance of regulating our own emotions so that we're not trapping these nice little guys in our house with like angry and upset emotions all the time. You know, if especially if they're they're so attuned to them that that's gonna affect them and it's gonna affect their stress level. And so I think especially if you have very stressed out cats, that's that's often a question that I ask, you know, when I'm meeting with clients. And if clients have especially stressed or fearful cats, is also what's going on in your home and what's going on with you as it is such a trickle down to the cats.

Serenella D'Ingeo 24:16

And it's also super complicated to uh intervene in these cases because they are also our own dynamics from human to other humans. So cats perceive. It is important to know that cats perceive it.

Kristiina Wilson 24:31

Yes.

Serenella D'Ingeo 24:31

So in a way, we have also to consider that it has consequences also on them. Yeah, absolutely.

Kristiina Wilson 24:38

So in the study, there was no significant difference in accuracy between relaxed, tense, and fearful states. Why is that important?

Serenella D'Ingeo 24:46

Well, still, because it really means that people don't have a clear representation of the signals that are expressed in a relaxed state and differentiate them from the stress ones. So it means actually that we are not so able as cats are indeed in detecting uh uh their emotional states, with all the consequences, of course, in our daily interaction and then generally in their life. Right.

Multicat Tension And When To Intervene

Kristiina Wilson 25:16

Did you have any thoughts about people who live in multicat households and how misreading these stress signals might contribute to social tension and redirected aggression in multicat households?

Serenella D'Ingeo 25:29

Then it's uh even more complicated, I think, also because then there are several layers, if we can say. So there is the first one, which is related to the interactions between cats. So with their own communication, and uh that sometimes we miss. Right. Also, there is another important point that we observe during our clinical uh activity, which is related to the very first, for example, very first period in which a new cat is introduced in the house. Sometimes we are super scared about all the consequences that this could uh produce, and we intervene in communication between interactions between our subjects, so the new one, and the old one who is uh already living in the house. And uh and so sometimes we complicate the finding of the equilibrium between the cats. Right. Of course, there is also the problem of space, because we again we remember that they are uh facultatively social animals, so some cats may not like to live with another cat. Right. They they need to have um you know like bigger spaces. Sometimes uh this complicate even more uh the situation. Uh we generally um give this uh uh advice to people when they adopt a new cat, which is uh please let your cat interact freely. Don't worry if they express uh aggressive behavior, of course, they don't have to be injured, but don't worry. Uh it's normal, they have to find their own equilibrium. So please let them adapt in this new environment, which is super important. Sometimes we are too scared, we are not so fast in detecting the problems, and we intervene and we create even worse problem. Right.

Kristiina Wilson 27:35

So are there early warning signs though that people should look for before something escalates? Or do you think that people should just be more hands-off?

The Nostril Preference Stress Study

Serenella D'Ingeo 27:45

Still in the multicat, you mean? Um well, I think that it is the case to intervene just when one subject subject expressed, for instance, a very fixed position in the space with so it's fixing stuck in a way in uh in a position with the the weight uh forward, so toward the other guy, the other cat, stare the other cat and start to move uh uh the the tail. Right. In that case, I would be not worried to intervene, but start to have a look more deeply and uh intervene if just start the fight, but I won't intervene before. Yeah.

Kristiina Wilson 28:26

So I wanted to move on to talk about uh the second study about the asymmetrical nostril use study in cats.

Speaker 1 28:34

Sure.

Kristiina Wilson 28:35

Can you you tell us a brief overview of that study and what your findings were?

Serenella D'Ingeo 28:40

Yes. So uh we wanted to explore the olfactory communication, again, about um a specific focus on emotional communication. Because of course, for us as uh as humans, uh it's easier to investigate first of all the visual and the auditory communication, but we don't have to um we don't have to forget that there is the olfactory communication which is uh out of our control, of course, right, but is uh super important when we talk about emotions because we found that there is this channel too and uh influence other individual uh behavior and emotional state during the interactions. So we wanted to have a look at this specifically. So we presented um emotional uh stimuli that we took from uh human sweat in different emotional conditions, and we presented them to dogs. Well, also to dogs. Yeah. We did it before to dogs and also to cats in the second step. And so we studied the their uh behavioral response, but also uh we use as a parameter their lateralized uh behavior, which means the use of one nostril, specific nostril to investigate a stimulus. We have a kind of well, yes, long experience, we can say on this, because we have a field of research on uh lateralization in domestic animals. And uh it's uh very important to consider also this parameter because it gives us a direct ass, well, not direct, undirect, access to the brain processing of a stimulus. So it means that, for instance, if we consider uh the use of a nostril, if we see that one animal, a domestic animal, use one nostril or prefer to use one nostril to say it better, investigate one stimulus, it means that one of the two hemispheres on the same side, so right nostril, right uh hemisphere, is involved in processing that stimulus. And we know that uh the two brain hemispheres had different uh uh specializations for emotional functioning. So we can derive information from this to understand how they feel. So uh if they preferentially use the right nostril, we know that they are attuned to that stimulus, they are ready to react, and they can interpret this stimulus as a treat. On the contrary, if we see that they prefer to use the left one, it means that the left hemisphere is on in that moment as a dominant activity, we could derive information on the fact that actually they are processing it and something that is known that is uh potentially positive or socially relevant in a positive way. So we use this kind of parameter because in fact gives a lot of information on the physiological processing of stimuli.

Kristiina Wilson 31:34

That's so it's so wild. That's not something I would have ever thought about. Does it have any ties to handedness? Like, yeah.

Serenella D'Ingeo 31:43

Yes, yes, it's the same. Actually, we are talking now about uh sensory processing. So nostril, it is really also the same for eyes and also ears, and for eyes and ears, we also generally use a kind of methodology that uh help us to detect the preference and use one ear or one eye. So we present simulate on the two parts and we see how they turn the head, so which which here or which eye they use. And it is related to the sensory domain, but we also uh have evidence on um uh motor lateralization, so use of one paw, for instance, to manipulate objects. And so we know in this case one hand corresponds to the use of the contralateral hemisphere, so on the other side.

Kristiina Wilson 32:30

So, what did you find about cats that when they were using the left versus right nostril when they were exposed to the different stimuli?

Serenella D'Ingeo 32:38

Actually, we found that they generally prefer to use the right nostril, so the right hemisphere is on in that moment for possessing this stimulus when they are more stressed. So we confirmed that also in cats the right hemisphere is involved in processing stress stimulus, especially if these stimuli are related to well, actually as a stress content. It means that they are collected during a fearful situation for humans, but also, which is kind of interesting, during a physical stress. So we actually we were super bad, we asked the human to run 15 minutes, and so we collected the um uh the sweat and we collected the uh this sample to detect uh the stress, which is not emotional but physical. Right. And they reacted to to this um in a similar way. So, what did you use then for the other stimulus? So we uh first of all tried to create the con the emotional conditions in humans. So we presented the humans to two videos, one that evoked happiness and another one that evoked fear, and we collected soon after they sweat with the samples, with the swabs. Then we also wanted to uh collect another sample related to physical stress. So we asked them to run 15 minutes. Got it. And then we also had a neutral sample that uh worked as a control for us. Then all this these samples, these web that were impregnated with the zwat with the zweat of humans, uh-huh, were presented to cats. So the cats just had the zwab with the odors, and uh we detected their reaction. So their uh behavioral reaction and their nostril use.

Kristiina Wilson 34:32

Absolutely. So that tells us that cats are more likely to use one nostril when something is threatening or novel or positive. Can we see examples of this in our own homes if we if we look at our cats, do you think?

Serenella D'Ingeo 34:46

It could be, but the the um the changes in the use is uh very fast. So to detect these, we analyze video frame by frame to be sure to count the amount of time they spent to investigate the swap the odor with one nostril or the other. So we can, but it won't be that easy, right? I want to say. But we could use other signals, still lateralized uh uh behaviors that are more easy to the more easy to detect, which is related to the preference of use one eye. So it means that cat, for instance, him or herself in a position having has or another individual on one side. So we know that in that particular moment they are uh using one here or one high to process, to elaborate. And so we can uh derive some information from this.

Kristiina Wilson 35:43

That makes sense. Yeah, probably people don't want to set up cameras and do a frame-by-frame analysis and code everything that their cats are doing.

Serenella D'Ingeo 35:52

Yes, yes, but if we if we say that owners uh will start to record videos to understand their cat, maybe they can also try to have a look on this. Sure.

Kristiina Wilson 36:04

I mean, why not? And just assemble a team of coders too, and just really get into it. Just start I would love it because I'm such a data nerd if I could get all my clients to to do this kind of thing and you know. But no one's no one's gonna do that. So, anyway, so if we can't see our cats, you know, doing this this type of nostril use easily, what does this research though tell us about how quickly cats are assessing their environment and how sensitive they are to emotional cues? Like, what can we as as cat owners take away from this research?

Serenella D'Ingeo 36:40

We can detect how they feel in that moment and uh how actually they think about the olfactory stimulus, the odor that they are investigating. So, for instance, that if there is something that is worrying them, they may use more the right nostril. Or if there is uh an odor that really attracts them, um, they can start to use the left nostril if it is positive, for instance. And uh so I think that this kind of information can be derived from this observation.

What Comes Next Plus Goodbye

Kristiina Wilson 37:14

All right. Um, I think this was so interesting. Yeah. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. Or do you have any upcoming studies that that you know you can tell us about that involve cats or other animals? Or what's next for you?

Serenella D'Ingeo 37:28

Um so we are now trying to have a deeper look on uh uh the uh communication between subjects. So also to have a deeper understanding on the communicative signals between uh cats and other cats or dogs and other dogs, still uh having uh a particular look on lateralized behavior as they are in our heart, if I can.

Kristiina Wilson 38:00

All right. Well, I'm excited to read any of your new work as it comes out and and see what new things that we can learn about cats. So thank you again so much for being on the podcast. Thank you. Thanks to you.

Serenella D'Ingeo 38:10

I really enjoy it. Thank you very much for your invitation again. Thank you.

Speaker 1 38:15

Thanks so much for listening to the show. If you're looking for one-on-one support with behavior issues like litter box problems, aggression, anxiety, or multicat dynamics, you can find me through my behavior consulting business, Catitude Adjustment, at catitude-adjustment.com. If you like the episode, please consider leaving a rating or review. It really helps us grow. For more episodes, show notes, and resources, head to hissandtelpodcast.com. Huge thanks to Cat Beats for the music, and I'll see you next time.