Do you have a puzzle feeder or another reward based feeding system for your dog and have wondered if your cat may like the same set up? Well, think again. According to research done by the University of California School of Veterinary Medicine, your cat does not want to have sing for their supper.
The researchers studied seventeen indoor cats and their eating habits to test their hypothesis that cats in a domestic environment would be more likely to contrafreeload (contrafreeloading is the willingness of animals to work for food when equivalent food is freely available) and that more active cats would also be more likely to contrafreeload.
For the study, the cats wore a FitBark to monitor their activity throughout the day and to measure their activity in relation to their willingness to contrafreeload. Through their research, they found that “There was no relationship between activity and contrafreeloading, and there was no effect of sex, age, or previous food puzzle experience on contrafreeloading”. This interesting data however only explains one portion of the puzzle and more research is needed to determine exactly why cats are not like their animal counterparts in terms of wanting to work for their food.
If you'd like to read more about this study, the original paper is available to read at Springer Link.
