Which cat breeds are more aggressive to family members? Which are shy towards strangers? Which cat breeds groom a lot, and which cats groom less? These might be some factors that you might want to consider when adopting a cat. A group of researchers decide to examine the behaviors of different cat breeds, as well as the heritability of their behaviors.
Salonen et al. (2019) surveyed Finnish cat owners on their cats’ behaviors, which included “tendency to seek human contact," “aggressiveness towards human family members, strangers, or other cats," and “shyness towards strangers or novel stimuli." In total, 5,726 cats were studied. The researchers then separated these cats into 19 breeds. The researchers controlled for environmental factors including “weaning age, access to outdoors, presence of other cats,” and general characteristics (sex, age of cat) in their analyses.
Check out the summary of the study over at Psychology Today.
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