> Most scientists and pet owners assumed the only reason that cats roll around in catnip was for the euphoric experience, Miyazaki says. "Our findings suggest instead that rolling is rather a functional behavior.”
There is no incompatibility between proximal and distal, what they call functional, explanations of behavior. Once you have a brain with a reward system, a good way to encourage (discourage) a behavior that is (dis)functional is to make it (dis)pleasurable.
A similar distinction in explanations of human behavior is what anthropologists call [emic/etic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emic_and_etic). The emic viewpoint is that of the subject themselves; the etic viewpoint is that of the anthropologist (the ethologist in this case). A classical, and beautiful example is Malinowski's description of the [Kula ring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kula_ring) in Papua New Guinea. Participants in the ring see themselves as exchanging presents; Malinowski showed that there is a further political and economic significance to the ring. The two perspectives are perfectly compatible.
Etic/emic is an insightful metaphor, mr airport. These things are complicated.
Even in your type example, I doubt that papuan chiefs were oblivious of the political elements gift giving. OTOH, a purely etic viewpoint is (anthropologically) incomplete too. The political/economic machinery that outsiders/scholars find doesn't work, or make any sense, without the emic/cultural perspective. The same could be said of most political processes. The US just changed presidents. Leading up to it was weeks/months of ritual. Processes and procedures in many state chambers, and such. Most of it doesn't have a practical role, yet its culturally essential.
We're often warned not to personify animals. I think more often we make the mistake of personifying people, so to speak. We always have rationalisations, but the way it works is usually after the fact... or only rational within an irrational/cultural frame.
Leonard cohen said that free will is overrated. It exists but is rarely exercised. More often, we act because we are compelled.
If cats were people, they'd roll in catnip because they're compelled to do so... but then cite this article and mosquitos as the "reason."
I read it as qualifying the degree of functionality in the rolling behaviour. That is: the rolling behaviour is functional to a significant extent, but is not entirely functional.
Interesting, as a native speaker I am only familiar with it meaning mutual exclusion, with a range of connotations from "the former is the opposite of correct" to "let me adjust that thought slightly". However, Merriam-Webster supports my experience with the first 4 definitions and then drops a "but also" as the fifth. Sometimes I hate English.
Sure thing, although I would argue the increased evolutionary fitness would be very small. The fact that they roll in it vs just inhaling it to me also suggests this.
Maybe their use of the word "functional" is different than mine, and we're saying the same thing. But to me there's a big difference from saying e.g. "Our findings suggest that chimps using sticks to dislodge food is a functional behavior."
I mean, have you ever heard of someone high on THC acting belligerent? I sure haven't. Alcohol, meth, cocaine, bath salts, everything else, absolutely. Ask a cop how often he gets called for a DV issue because someone is drunk.
But weed? Nah. People on weed just want to eat pretzels and watch cartoons.
Not just catnip,valerian too,which is a 'top recreational drug' for cats, apparently. When we were kids,we used to give small amounts of valerian root to our cat to chew. The cat would literally tear anything apart just to get it. Then,a few minutes later,it gets high, and just keeps rolling over purring with satisfaction.
The cat I had growing up was OBSESSED with olives. He would eat one, then roll around in the spot where it was on the floor. It was the same reaction he had to catnip, but more extreme.
My current cat is much less interested in olives, but loves catnip.
Try cutting and sanding a (too big for their mouth) piece of wood (it's a very hard wood), in my experience that's the most "potent" form of the drug. I used to keep a piece of wood, a bit larger than a domino, for my own cat and sanded it more or less regularly.
I don't know about olive species, but I know that not all cats have that weakness.
Valerian is the cat drug in my home country. Mentioned it once to a friend, a Canadian, and brought him a bit the next time I went back home for a visit. His cat had no reaction. Zero. But the catnip worked as expected.
Oh, there definitely is a difference in probability of being a catnip responder: https://www.gwern.net/images/catnip/catnip-googlesurveys-cou... European countries appear less likely. However, that seems explainable simply by higher or lower genetic level of catnip response propensity. They are less likely to respond, but I would expect the correlation matrix to be the same. There's no particular reason to expect the fundamental biology to be different and thus that a cat in Europe is responding to catnip using a different biological pathway and so whatever overlap there is with the valerian response may be completely different and the correlation within-cat different.
How were they able to patent this? I've known for 20 years that catnip works as a mosquito repellent; there was a 2001 paper that showed that its essential oil, nepetalactone, was 10 times more effective than DEET[1]. Soon after this a variety of "natural mosquito repellent" products based on catnip appeared on the market. I've made homemade repellent myself by soaking catnip in alcohol and it works great, although it wears off faster than commercial DEET-based repellent; have to keep reapplying.
Anyway, another patent that shouldn't have been issued.
Were you ever mobbed by cats while using? I could see that effect really freaking someone out who wasn't ready for it. Like a scene from Hitchcock's The Birds but cats.
>sesquiterpenoid mixture, wherein the sesquiterpenoid mixture is an elmol/hedycaryol mixture having a purity of 55% or more (..plus any possible carrier)
"I never quite understood why catnip was so socially acceptable when we view other drugs with such different eyes."
Do you treat "drugs are bad" as an axiomatic statement, or do you accept "drugs are bad" as the contingent conclusion of a series of more fundamental statements?
We drill the former into (young) children because it is true enough for them, and they aren't ready for the latter.
If you can understand the latter, then take the underlying statements, and apply them to the cats. You'll find most of them simply don't apply to cats. Maybe a couple of them slightly do, but none of them work like humans. Humans have a unique capacity to be affected by drugs due to our superb executive functioning. Non-humans are all but incapable of bending their entire life around drug-seeking behavior the way we are partially because we're really good at making them, and also because we're uniquely good at refining them. (It's a long cognitive distance from "let the fruit sit a while to taste fun" to "let's build a still!".)
I started off giving my catnip once every few weeks or so. Soon it was multiple times a day. Now the cat just lies around on the sofa all day, waiting for the next fix. I dare not stop because I fear its claws. The active, happy animal I knew is gone, replaced by this sleepy, torpid monster—just another victim of catnip addiction.
Not all humans view drugs in the same manner. In some locales, it is accepted to use drugs recreationally. Other places deem that same usage unacceptable. If you look at the similarity in the gov'ts that deem that usage as unacceptable, there's a common overall belief that is not scientifically based.
Some sort of drug is usually acceptable culturally. Alcohol, very widely. Cannabis, more recently. Mild drugs like coffee. "Prescribed recreationals" like xanax in some circles. In many places Hashish or opium are still seen as traditional/acceptable.
I grew up in Israel, where qat is legal, seen as equivalent to coffee and culturally acceptable. It's fairly common as an ornamental plant.
Giving your cat whiskey would cause an uproar, but I guess catnip gets a grandfather exception.
Sure, I wasn't recommending it. I'm just pointing out that it's culturally acceptable to give cats catnip. Culture happens, and sometimes it's rational. Sometimes it's not.
In general: if an animal is observed to purposefully do something in the wild, and that thing isn’t known to be harmful to the animal, then most people will consider that thing to be a valid “enrichment” activity — i.e. something that would be good to offer as an activity for animals of that species, in captivity, to engage in when they seem bored/understimulated.
I don’t know about cats with catnip specifically, but many wild animals are observed to purposefully seek out and consume rotten (i.e. fermented, alcoholic) fruit to get drunk/high. (We know that alcohol is harmful to animals, so we don’t tend to offer e.g. captive apes rotten fruit; but we also don’t really stop them from hoarding fruit to make it become rotten, and then eating it. It’s a natural thing that they do. Cats gonna scratch each-other up play-fighting. Apes gonna drink.)
But why do we have such a different mindset toward this?
I think one big difference is that the human social norms on the acceptable recreational activities for humans are mostly defined/circumscribed by what doctors think is okay (i.e. we take the lead of the medical establishment — if doctors are chill about something, there isn’t usually a social norm against it, while if doctors get upset, other people also get upset.) And doctors don’t like recreational drugs very much, because they usually think in a “harm reduction” mindset rather than a QALY mindset: they’d rather decrease “risk of a loss of capability to experience a satisfying life”, than increase “the area-under-the-curve of satisfying-life-years.”
Meanwhile, the human social norms on the acceptable recreational activities for animals are mostly defined/circumscribed by what zoologists think is okay. Zoologists are the people with voices and platforms to talk about animals, since engaging in animal conservation and study tends to directly correlate with seeking funding for that conservation and study, which is usually implemented through educational outreach activities (i.e. building zoos/aquariums/nature parks, giving tours in conservation areas, etc.) And zoologists, traditionally(?), mostly care about what they observe happening in nature. The whole field of zoology is built on observing animals in nature to figure out “what they do.” So our norms on animal recreation lean much more toward “natural ⇒ good” (regardless of harm potential) than “potentially harmful ⇒ bad” (regardless of naturalness.)
If veterinarians had the voices and platforms instead, I assume you’d see much more of a harm-reduction mindset in our social norms toward animal recreation.
Yes, it is to see them have fun. The cats definitely appear to enjoy it. My cat has learned to recognize the sound of me opening the tub of catnip and will come running across the house to get some.
Good for them? Maybe. It's certainly not bad for them. This has been very much studied. Cats can't overdose on catnip. At worst, after 5-15 minutes of sniffing and rolling around in it, they stop responding to it.
> when we view other drugs with such different eyes.
Because most drugs humans take are harmful. The hard stuff like meth, cocaine, heroin, etc., is easy to overdose on. Alcohol can make some people belligerent and can easily be deadly. Tobacco causes cancer, among other things depending on how you consume it. Marijuana is the least harmful, but as far as I'm concerned, the jury is still out on whether or not it's as harmless as people think it is, especially if smoked.
But catnip? It's completely harmless. The cat will sniff or eat it, roll around in it, and appears to experience euphoria, but there are no health dangers in it.
Along the same lines, does it gives cats a “hangover” of sorts afterwards? The article describes catnip as similar to heroin for humans. I’ve never done heroin but I would imagine the withdrawal is really unpleasant which is what then causes addiction. Do cats experience the same come down? Can cats get addicted to catnip if they have access to an unlimited supply?
The behavior I notice with my cats when they have some ‘nip is they get a little active then have a time where they just mellow out. But cats also sleep about 16 hours a day, so it is hard to determine at what point being mellow shifts into their typical nap time.
I don’t think there’s a long-term tolerance that builds up. I get the sense it is short-acting. I’ve read once a cat has catnip, giving them more in a 15-20 minute window is pointless because they’ve already been “activated” by it. They need to come down from the initial dose first.
My cats’ vet has suggested to use catnip to encourage activity (they’re a big chunky and need some exercise).
Complacency is a huge downside. I'm also much less motivated to work on side projects.
Not to mention the toll on the lungs. Ask Willie Nelson if you'd like anecdata about how that can play out over a lifetime.
I've recently made the leap to edibles exclusively after a stint with a hot-air vaporizer (a la Volcano devices) and I now find the resin smell of smoking incredibly off-putting. The coughing, hacking, and lung stiffness that results from a bong rip even more so.
Doesn't lessen the complacency, but the delay your metabolism introduces can help you get started on projects before it sets in!
I've met christian, conservative, Swedish country-side folk who frown on anything the government considers illegal or drugs.
But at the same time will use catnip on a new cat toy as a tool to make the cat take to it. Or just watch it roll around for their own amusement.
Maybe that's a fringe example but I have had that experience a couple times.
More often I have contact with younger people in their 20s and 30s who don't view human drugs as anything morally wrong and just enjoy giving their cat what they assume is enjoyment.
i recently moved into a house with some other people. they have cats which they have owned for many years. after living here for a while, i was sitting on the couch watching star trek with these people when one of the cats came up and sat on my lap. they were shocked. that cat didnt sit on any of their laps, ever. and they became a little jealous. this happens literally every time i take up residence with people who own cats. their cats become very attached to me and the owners become jealous. one time, very very jealous.
most people are very blunt. they do not see past the surface of anything. they are impressed with superficial charm and not much else. they arent able to see inside a person, to figure out how their mind works or what it would be like to wear their shoes. they dont build models to explain the world and they arent interested in knowing how anything works. they dont listen when people speak. most people are stupid. and most of the time, this kind of talk is cast aside as being too vague and qualitative. but i have quantified it with cats.
when you consider a cat, the first impulse is to anthropomorphize. and since the cat cant speak, your assumptions about what it wants are guided by your anthropomorphism. most people only get this far and so most peoples relationship with their cats are really relationships with themselves. but some people pay close attention to what the cat is doing and how it responds to things, and carefully pack away that data instead of just writing it off as noise or "thats just what cats do." eventually you are able to demonstrate to the cat, through your actions, that you understand what it is feeling and what it wants. when a cat realizes that you are paying attention, that you are listening, it is a very different experience for the cat. the cat understands whats going on and will act in a way that is designed to communicate. and they will also trust and love you much, much more than anyone else because they know you are listening. thats the key, they are smart enough to know. most people assume they are dumb, and attribute their aloofness to it.
people get super jealous because they think they are showering their cats with love. and they try to fix it by loving them more, but it just makes it worse.
if a person has cats and has not unlocked this line of communication, in my experience they also havent deeply understood other humans or anything else. and i almost never meet people who have.
I have fostered roughly 25 cats (one at a time), and what you wrote about communication resonates with me. Most cats seem to develop a sort of pidgin[1] language in collaboration with you to communicate how they feel or what they want. It's different for each cat, but is usually some combination of vocalization tones, body postures/movements, eye contact, or even the location in the house they choose to do those things from.
I went through the process of befriending a very timid/shy cat owned by a housemate and would largely agree. I'd say it differently, maybe "seek first to understand and then to be understood"?
But in learning how to befriend this "difficult" cat I really had to set aside all of my own agendas and ideas, and I learned something very generalizable about how to learn.
while you are onto something, it also reads like "all my nieces love me and hate their parents because I am around to play with them and give them gifts but not around to force them eat the food they dislike"
Is the high similar to heroin/morphine etc in humans? Because if it is, then is catnip not addictive to a cat? What if a cat discovers whole fields of the stuff and decided to revel in it until death? It's unlikely but it could happen
Anecdotr: one of our cats, upon presented with unlimited amounts of catnip, consumed it until it became basically K-holed and then refused to touch the stuff for a few years afterwards, suggesting the equivalent of a hangover.
Also, from the article: "Big or small, the felines surrendered to the substance, rubbing their heads and bodies in the patches for an average of 10 minutes"
I've considered growing actinidia kolomikta, a species of kiwi berry vine, which is noted on wikipedia as being highly attractive to cats. The article mentions Actinidia polygama so I wonder if it's just the entire genus
I think it is most of the genus, I've seen cats eat the shoots on Actinidia plants (Arugata).
I know silvervine is in a lot of catnip mixed, I think not all cats react to whatever pheromone is in catnip so a lot of mixes have several different euphoria in them to try to increase efficacy.
My cats get high after eating tiny bits of green olives. They roll, are crazy for more, will literally lick my clothes if I spilled a drop of the pickle, and one of the gets a bit playfully aggressive. Just the smell of olives attracts them like crazy. Have also tried catnip, but no observable effect.
I don't overdo it, I don't have olives very often in the fridge, and even then they maybe get a tiny piece once a week.
I never gave them olives by conscious decision; it never occurred to me that they'd like i t. I think I spilled some brine (few drops only) on the kitchen desk, the cat appeared to be there at the same time, sniffed at it, licked it and got crazy for more.
This is beyond liking. The effect is similar to that of catnip when I watch videos of cats high on catnip. They start rolling, rubbing against surfaces, they beg for more, etc. And shortly after (10-ish minutes) the effect wanes off.
New cat utterly unresponsive to catnip, wonder if defective. Have never encountered a cat that didn't go cray for the nips until now. Last cat was so into it, I worried whether she experienced withdraw symptoms. Literature on that is pretty mixed though.
Speaking to an Australian friend, I learned that 25% of cats don't respond to catnip at all - or cat mint, as they call it. Apparently the branch of the cat family in Australia are ones that don't have the catnip genes, so she had never witnessed a cat acting crazy in the characteristic cat way.
My previous cats did two different things - one would instantly flop down and roll in the catnip, then lazily lick it off her paws. The other cat would make a beeline for any catnip and intently eat all of it, shoving aside the rolling cat.
Globally, catnip immunity rates are closer to a third, but Australia is at the extreme with about half cats not responding.
Villani 2011 https://www.gwern.net/docs/catnip/2011-villani.pdf establishes that catnip response is highly heritable but polygenic (not Mendelian), and to a first approximation, no one studies cat genetics - so it will be difficult to prove that there's some sort of founder effect on Australian/Mexican/Spanish cats causing a lower genetic propensity.
This is quite amazing. The longer I read, the more impressed I am that you went through all the trouble. Considering the time and money spent on surveys, et al., was this ever published as a study?
p.s. This is the ultimate thread-killer. Had this been posted at the very top of the thread, most of the comments and speculations posted would be irrelevant. Can @dang please pin this to the top? ;)
New cat? Is it young? This could be the issue. And like others have said, a minority of cats just don't care for it.
Neither of my cats go as absolutely nuts over it like some other cats: That said, they both know which toy has a pile of the stuff in it for them to eat freely and somewhat regularly have some bites.
Rate limited account, can't reply to everyone. But thanks for all the advice, going to try to peddle some of these other substances on her. She's 3yrs old, olfactory fine, maybe too fine, yaks rudely when I'm on the can.
One of my cats didn't care for it at all his first 5 or so years of life, but now loves the stuff. I've also read that something like 30% of cats don't like catnip at all.
I tried growing some catnip but the plants got eaten right down to the roots by someone. I tried again this time with a cage around the plant and it worked great but my cat just gets annoyed when I wave it in her face. Apparently she falls in the sober population
A timely article. I just put some silvervine powder in a paper bag and watched our kitties go mental, sticking their heads in, rolling around. Great fun.
Catnip is the only socially acceptable drug that I’ve seen that you can administer to animals. Imagine the outrage if you substitute catnip with cannabis or alcohol and post it to YouTube. Granted in the case of alcohol you most certainly could kill the animal.
I suspect like most things in nature it's a bell curve; of varying responses. My cat responds, but not super enthusiastically. I've had other cats that just ignored. And other cats that went crazy for the stuff.
They are not. I haven't met a cat crazy for catnip or valeriana since I was a kid. They either ignore them completely or express occasional moderate interest.
There is no incompatibility between proximal and distal, what they call functional, explanations of behavior. Once you have a brain with a reward system, a good way to encourage (discourage) a behavior that is (dis)functional is to make it (dis)pleasurable.
A similar distinction in explanations of human behavior is what anthropologists call [emic/etic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emic_and_etic). The emic viewpoint is that of the subject themselves; the etic viewpoint is that of the anthropologist (the ethologist in this case). A classical, and beautiful example is Malinowski's description of the [Kula ring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kula_ring) in Papua New Guinea. Participants in the ring see themselves as exchanging presents; Malinowski showed that there is a further political and economic significance to the ring. The two perspectives are perfectly compatible.