Experiment to do at home: find out if your cat is right- or left-handed
Whether you're writing, grabbing a jar, holding your phone to your ear during a call, or shaking someone's hand, one thing's for sure: you'll be using your dominant hand. By this is meant the hand which you instinctively find more comfortable to use, and with which you have both more strength and dexterity.
Apparently our feline friends also have a "dominant paw". Let's see who believes this and how to possibly find out if our cat is right-handed or left-handed.
Even cats (no matter what they say) have busy days and during their daily activities, such as hunting for example, they tend to use one paw rather than the other.
Two scientists, Deborah Wells and Sarah Millsopp, realized this and wanted to investigate the matter further: they conducted an interesting experiment on 41 cats, 20 of which were female and 21 male.
The experiment was as simple as it was effective: a succulent morsel of tuna was placed inside a glass and the cats had to reach for it. The results were incredible!
All the females used only their right paw to "get the treat", while all but one of the males used their left paws! This strange result led the two researchers to suspect that handiness in cats depends on gender.
But further study produced a different result: kittens and cats, regardless of their gender, did not show any dominant paw use whilst playing.
As a result, the scientists concluded cats only use their dominant paw for complex tasks. So if you want to try to find out which is your cat's dominant paw, you can do the same "complex" experiment: place a snack for kittens in a glass where the cat cannot easily access it and observe with which paw they use - it will be the cat's dominant paw!
