Good video of a female domestic cat in heat adopting lordosis position

Lordosis behaviour is described sensitively and respectfully 😎 by the Wikipedia authors as "the naturally occurring body posture for sexual receptivity to copulation". You can see the female raising her backside and placing her tail to one side to allow the male access for copulation.

Note about the video above. I would expect this to stop working but what will be left is a link to the Reddit.com website where you can see the video. Or it might just stop working! Sorry if that has happened but I don't control the video.

The Wikipedia authors are far more technical about the description. They say that "during lordosis, the spine curves dorsoventrally so that its apex points towards the abdomen"!

Lordosis behaviour happens when the queen (unsterilised female) is in heat otherwise known as oestrus which is spelt "estrus" in America.

It is also known as mammalian lordosis indicating that it is seen in different mammals such as hamsters, elephants and eastern grey squirrels.

It is a reflex action which is crucial to reproductive behaviour. The "lordosis reflex arc" is hardwired into the spinal cord at the level of the lumbar and sacral vertebrae. The action is moderated by the brain.

The female cries out for attention and this vocalisation is called caterwauling. My mind turns to cat breeders in keeping stud cats away from queens. And I can remember a complaint by a neighbour because the breeder's facilities were in a neighbourhood, an urban environment.

The complaint was about the noise from the breathing cats. As I recall they were Bengal cats.

The female is ready for copulation and fertilisation under the action of oestrogen in the hypothalamus resulting in an uninhibited lordosis reflex. Dramatic words.

Cruder words would be that female cats positions themselves in a way which makes it easier for male cats to have sex with them. Breeding cats are very good at procreation. Theoretically, and I stress theoretically, a single pair of breeding domestic cats could produce 65,536 cats in five years!

This assumes that all survive, and that males and females are born in equal numbers and that they all start breeding when they are a year old. Reality is different.

2 cats became 84 in 2 years (in 1 room). Image: Image: Feline Solutions Inc.

However, we do see some pretty sad pictures of goodwilled but misdirected cat hoarders allowing their cats to breed rapidly such as the 84-year-old lady living in one room with almost a hundred cats. All she had to do was sterilise the cats. She started with two, unfortunately a male and a female!