Cats Can Recognize Their Owner’s Scent Compared to a Stranger’s, New Research Suggests
In an experiment, domestic cats spent longer sniffing cotton swabs with the scents of unfamiliar people than swabs with the scent of their owner
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Your cats may act aloof, but they likely know more about you than they let on. Research has shown that cats can tell when you’re speaking to them and that they recognize the voice of their owner—they just might choose to ignore it.
Now, a new study published in the journal PLOS One last week suggests cats can distinguish their owner’s smell from the scent of a stranger.
Tokyo University of Agriculture animal scientist Hidehiko Uchiyama and his team presented 30 domestic cats with plastic tubes containing cotton swabs. Each swab contained an odor captured from their owner or an unknown person the same sex as their owner—or no odor at all. The samples were collected from people’s underarms, behind their ears and between their toes.
The cats spent longer sniffing the scent of an unknown person compared to the other two swabs, suggesting they were already familiar with the scent of their owner. So, the next time your cat spends more time smelling your friend’s feet than your own, you can rest easy knowing it’s because they remember your scent.
While the cats in the study showed familiarity with certain odors, this doesn’t necessarily mean they can identify specific humans by scent alone—just that they can tell the difference between the smell of their owner and an unfamiliar scent.
To test whether they truly recognize their owner’s smell, “behavioral experiments in which cats are presented with multiple known-person odor stimuli would be needed, and we would need to find specific behavioral patterns in cats that appear only in response to the owner’s odor,” explains Uchiyama to Tim Dodd at the BBC.
The researchers also analyzed video recordings of the cats inspecting the tubes and found that the animals tended to sniff familiar odors with the left nostril. They mostly used the right nostril for unfamiliar scents. Scientists have previously observed similar behavior in dogs and other animals like fish and birds, according to a statement from the journal.
“The left nostril is used for familiar odors, and the right nostril is used for new and alarming odors, suggesting that scenting may be related to how the brain functions,” says Uchiyama to Kate Golembiewski at the New York Times. “It is likely that the right brain is preferred for processing emotionally alarming odors.”
Carlo Siracusa, an animal behavior researcher at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine who was not involved with the study, says to the New York Times that he would be wary of relating the nostril use to brain function without research that scans the felines’ brains. “The study did not prove that the right side of the brain is activated,” he says.
Each cat owner was also tasked with completing a questionnaire about their pet’s behavior and characteristics. The researchers found that male cats described by their owners as neurotic would sniff each tube repeatedly, while more relaxed males were more satisfied with just a short sniff. The reported personalities of female cats did not appear to affect their sniffing behavior.
Even if more research is needed, “I really commend this group of scientists for being successful in engaging 30 cats in doing this stuff,” Siracusa adds to the New York Times. “Most cats want nothing to do with your research.”
