Cat’s Brain Releases the Same Love Hormone as Humans

Cat’s Brain Releases the Same Love Hormone as Humans

It has been found that mammals, which of course includes the domestic cat, produce a hormone in a part of the brain called the hypothalamus, which has been described as the "love hormone".  It's technical name is "oxytocin". The hormone is associated with friendliness and, for example, sexual intercourse and is produced when animals interact with themselves, or when people interact with animals, on a friendly and intimate level.

Because there's a great similarity in the way this hormone is produced by both the human-animal and the animal it has been concluded that the domestic cat feels similar emotions to people when they fall in love.

I have extended that presumption a little bit because we do not know exactly how animals feel including of course the domestic cat but I think it is fair to say that if the production of the hormone is very similar and as the hormone is produced during intimate relations as described, it is likely that the domestic cat feels the same as humans under these circumstances.

Paul J. Zak, a professor at Claremont Graduate University carried out the research.  Interestingly, he refers to a friendly relationship between a goat and a dog; what I will call an interspecies relationship-the kind that I really like to see.  When the goat and the dog were playing he discovered that the production of this so-called love hormone was extremely elevated in the goat to a point where he came to the conclusion that it was likely that the goat was in love with his dog companion.

For me, what is important about this finding is that once again we are reminded that anatomically the cat is very similar to the human in many ways and it also sheds light on how a cat feels.  There is always a lot of speculation about how cats feel.  For example the feeling of pain.  Cats feel pain but it can be difficult to judge how bad it is.  Cats can feel depressed or contented but once again it is hard to measure these emotions.  And because it is hard to measure these emotions people tend to undervalue them in the domestic cat.

This further research by Prof Zak will help people to respect the cat more, I hope.  Daily we are understanding animals better.  We are understanding the kind of intelligence that they possess and it is my passion and hope that we can begin to see them as equals as a result.

When cats living groups you often see friendships forming.  Cats that are friends with each other groom each other.  One can imagine that two cats grooming each other and enjoying each other's company have an elevated reduction at that moment of oxytocin. I think people should be aware that because it should make people more sensitive towards their cat companions.

Animal World’s Equivalent of the Victoria Cross. Discussion

Animal World’s Equivalent of the Victoria Cross. Discussion

Recently, a Labrador named Sasha won the animal equivalent of the Victoria Cross when serving the military in Afghanistan, sniffing out explosives.  Both she and her handler Sgt Dodds was shot dead in 2008 while on patrol.

During military service in Afghanistan, Sasha had made 15 confirmed findings of explosives clearly saving many lives while exposing herself to injury and death (as was her handler).

What a wonderful dog but are people as wonderful?  Is it right that we should put a wonderful dog into a war zone to help win the war for Americans and British against the Taliban? A dog doesn't know anything about war.  Sasha was simply trained to smell the odour of explosives.  She never knew what explosions actually were and had no idea that she was helping to protect military personnel fighting a war.

Wars are a complete failure and the Afghanistan war is more of failure than other wars.  This is failure upon failure and then, it could be argued, we glorify war and validate it by awarding a wonderful dog with the animal equivalent of the Victoria Cross (Dickin medal) for her bravery.  Do animals know about the concept of bravery?  I'm not sure they do.  Animals just do it.  And dogs do what they are trained to do.  A dog does not know that they are in danger - that they might be killed at any minute.

Wars are a human creation and a reflection of the failure of humankind to resolve disputes in a sensible manner.  Why should we involve any animal?

If the military in a war want to discover where explosives are they should devise a method to do that which is both effective and which protects them from injury and death.  Is that beyond human ingenuity?  It would have been better if the military could have poured a few million bucks into that project.

When you consider the billions and billions of dollars and pounds poured into the Afghan war why couldn't a few hundred million been poured into devising a mechanical method to discover explosives under the ground by the roadside?

It's just easier to train a dog.  There are lots of dogs and every one of them is very able to sniff out explosives and we all know that dogs are easy to train.  And they are loyal and will do as they are told.  Does this mean that people should exploit them by putting them in danger in war zones?

The Dickin medal is a wonderful award.  It is awarded by the PDSA in the UK.  But if I wanted to be very critical of it - and I don't want to be critical - you could say that, as mentioned above, it validates the concept of warfare and you could say that it supports the enlisting of animals as military personnel.

I think that the better way to proceed is to put more effort into avoiding war and to put more effort into research in robotics so that robots can detect explosives rather than a living, feeling, sentient loyal companion animal.

What do you think? Please leave a comment.

25 Cats Found Murdered in Yonkers, New York: An Atrocious Act of Animal Cruelty

25 Cats Found Murdered in Yonkers, New York: An Atrocious Act of Animal Cruelty

At the heart of human society there is a darkness which sometimes presents itself to the public in the form of unspeakable evil and the victims of this evil are often feral or stray cat because they are some of the most vulnerable creatures on the planet.  No one hates as much as a cat hater and it doesn't take long for a cat hater to find a cat to abuse, to be cruel to, to kill and then to hang up in a black plastic bin liner just for the hell of it.

Photo: SPCA of Westchester

There is something demented about this act of mass cat cruelty because of the black bags containing the dead bodies of the cats and kittens which have been hung from the branches of a tree in a wood overlooking the Hudson River.

The cats and kittens inside the bags had been killed with a blunt instrument.  Some had been killed a long time ago and were skeletons while others were killed within days.  That would indicate that the person responsible had been doing this for a very long time and it was part of a routine in his life. A person can go on killing stray and feral cats for a long time without being caught because no one is responsible for the cats and to be brutally honest very few people really care about feral cats.  Quite the contrary, a lot of people hate feral cats.

You can imagine it, a small deserted wooded area overlooking the Hudson River.  No one goes there except a demented evil bastard who hates cats and probably hates the world as well.  He wants to hurt something.  He wants to kill something but realises that if he kills a person he is likely to end up in prison for the rest of his life so what does it do?  He picks on the most vulnerable amongst us and in any case it's a chance to express his hatred for cats.

There is almost a close relationship between nastiness in a person and a hatred for cats.  Sometimes I think that the two aspects of a person's personality accompany each other like a demented duo festering inside the person's soul eating away at it until it has to be expressed.

There is a particular nastiness about a cat hater and a cat killer.  What makes this example of cat cruelty and killing particularly macabre is the black plastic bags.  Why do that?  Has this person got a fetish about black plastic?  It seems that way to me.

I envisage a man of about 35 years of age who has very poor personal hygiene, a loner who spends all his time on a computer playing violent video games.  I guess I'm stereotyping him and that is the wrong thing to do because you never quite know the cat haters.  They could be anybody.

Leopard Cat In Taiwan Under Threat from Habitat Loss

Leopard Cat In Taiwan Under Threat from Habitat Loss

Another rather ordinary example of habitat loss which threatens another wild cat species.  That said, this is the first time that I've written about a wild cat species in Taiwan.  The leopard cat is present over large parts of Asia but as usual under constant threat.  Apparently, they are found on plantations because they have adapted well.

In this instance, in an area in central-west Taiwan (Miaoli County), which appears to be fairly urbanised already, a group of companies has decided to develop in an area where the leopard cat lives, without proper planning permission and without an environmental impact assessment having been carried out beforehand. There are an estimated 500 leopard cats in the area we are informed. The leopard cat is the wild cat half of the domestic Bengal cat and is called "Rock Tiger" (Joho) in Taiwan.

I sense, but I have no firm evidence, that this sort of business expansion, which appears to ride roughshod over legislation and planning laws is not untypical in Asia.

I have no right to preach about this, of course, but you only have to read about the lack of enforcement of conservation laws in China to understand that there is widespread corruption.  The Chinese government admits it and if there is corruption in China there is almost certainly a fair bit of corruption in Taiwan. The Forbes website reports on an increasing corruption in Taiwan and an increase in bribery of the judiciary.  I don't know how true that is but it would seem to be accurate.

Ultimately, it is the lack of proper legislation and a lack of enforcement of proper legislation which results in unregulated expansion of human activity particularly business activity such as a illegal logging resulting in deforestation which results in habitat loss leading to the gradual extinction of wild cat species.

Business has very little if any interest in the conservation of wildlife because wildlife simply gets in the way of making a profit unless of course they're using and abusing it to make a profit but that is another story.

Is my cat suffering paw pain from a declaw she endured as a young kitty?

Is my cat suffering paw pain from a declaw she endured as a young kitty?

This is possibly a fairly classic case of botched domestic cat declaw surgery on a kitten which is causing continuing pain and discomfort which in turn has led to inappropriate elimination because walking on cat litter is painful.

The only way to find out whether the declaw surgery has been botched and if there are fragments of bone in the cat's paw or there is re-growth of the claw is by x-ray and that costs money and so, of course, will the follow-up surgery if there is something wrong.

When you consider that a veterinarian performs declaw surgery on all 10 toes on the fore-paws of a cat in about 15 mins you can see the potential for getting it, wrong can't you?  Most often veterinarians use a simple guillotine device a bit like garden secateurs.  It's quite horrendous really when you think about it.

The vet, of course, presumes that the excruciating pain suffered by the cat after the operation will subside over the forthcoming week.  But does it?  The veterinarian won't know and it is quite possible that neither will the cat's owner because cats are very good at hiding pain but sometimes a change in behaviour indicates something is amiss.

This is such a case.  Tina wants to have her cat's toes x-rayed by a competent veterinarian to see whether there is something wrong with them due to the declaw surgery which occurred many years before.

Tina has come to this conclusion because her cat demonstrates inappropriate elimination and continuing problems in that regard.  Her cat's name is Mollie.

My website provides charitable donations once a month based on the number of comments acquired during that month (at $.05 a comment).  The usual amount is about $80-$100 per month.  I'm happy to help and what we could do is put together two month's worth of donations to see whether that will cover the cost of x-rays.

Once the x-rays are carried out then, if there is a problem, there are veterinary surgeons who can repair the damage.  Some veterinarians are very skilled at this and know all about these sorts of problems.

What's the moral to this tale?  Well it is this: declaw surgery happens a lot and and no one knows whether the operation has left behind a lasting problem with pain and behaviour so beware and be aware of this potential problem.

Note: this is a duplicate post on the same subject but written entirely afresh with different words and therefore it is an entirely new post.  The reason why I posted it here is because this website can sometimes be found better by Google in searches than the main website. And I want to spread the word to help this cat.