Reason why cats get their heads stuck in glass jars and cans

In one way, it is obvious why cats get their heads stuck in glass jars and cans. It is because they are scavenging for food at the bottom of the jar and their head size is a tight fit into the jar. They can push their head into it with some friction but there is no means to remove their head because the jar is not clamped in place. This behavior flies in the face of the concept that cats judge the width of gaps with their whiskers.

Reason why cats get their heads stuck in glass jars and cans. The beginning of the problem. Screenshot.

Reason why cats get their heads stuck in glass jars and cans. THE PROBLEM!

Cats seem to presume that because they can push their head into the jar that they will be able to remove it. They don't understand the physics which is obvious and to be expected. If one wants to get inside the head of a cat, it seems that they believe the jar is fixed in place so that when they pull their head up the jar stays in place. They probably expect this because when they push their head into it the jar does, indeed, stay in place.

It's a matter of a failure to understand. And this probably comes about because, as is shown in this video, the domestic cat is living in a human environment. The cookie jar is a human product. They don't fully understand them or totally understand the human environment. You will not find wild cats getting their head stuck in something in nature. All these instances of domestic and feral cats getting their head stuck in an object are invariably concerned with human objects.

If you like, this is a clash of cultures: the cat world and the human world, which sometimes leaves the cat vulnerable to this kind of distressing scene. However, in this instance the video of the cat, which I can't present on this page, shows a domestic cat in a household setting and therefore the whole thing was set up by the video maker.

That, by the way, is another bugbear of mine. I don't like to see scripted videos which entail either a minor or a major abuse of a domestic cat. A lot of them do. And as the pressure mounts to try and get your video seen by people, there is a greater motivation for cat owners to at least mildly abuse their cat or exploit them to get those precious viewings.