Tortoiseshell coat, flat face, curved ears… Many cats cause a sensation for their cutest physical characteristics. Perhaps you have a beautiful or adorable Persian at home. scottish Foldwith an original look. But there is nothing natural about these breeds and have, for the most part, been carefully created by breeders.
However, certain trends, such as the tail curled over the back like a spitz – which is gaining popularity among owners – can unintentionally complicate a cat’s social life. Indeed, according to Scientific American who relays a study to appear in The Veterinary Journal in December 2024, these certainly charming but very unusual tails could give a feline a kind of non-verbal “accent” that its peers (or even humans) do not understand.
You are probably aware that kitties have a wide repertoire of body language signals: they arch their backs, ruffle their fur and flatten their ears to express fear or stress. They squint their eyes, knead with their paws, and rub their heads to show affection and trust. And their flagship signal: a simple erect tail, held vertically, which translates to their comrades as “Hello, friend!”.
Morgane Van Belle, a cat ethologist at Ghent University in Belgium, was studying interactions between felines in private homes when she discovered surprising tails that folded completely over their backs. The cats in question could wag, swing and drop their tails, but couldn’t hold them straight, and hadn’t always. This suggests a genetic mutation and likely a breeding effort to perpetuate this breed, called «American Ringtail» (not to be confused with the small mammal of the raccoon family).
Curious about how curled tails affect cats’ ability to communicate, the ethologist and his colleagues observed them interacting with other cats. After analysis, the curled tail gives the cat “a bit like an accent” that it may take time and effort for others to understand, says Morgan van Belle. Indeed, tails curling across the back are not part of the linguistic repertoire of kitties, as most of them cannot make this movement.
Complicated, but well-established communication
However, normal-tailed cats that cohabited with curled-tailed ones were happy to groom, play, and sleep with their funny-looking counterparts, meaning they found another way to communicate friendly messages, report the researchers. Sandra Nicholson, an animal behaviorist who was not involved in the study, describes: “They continue to send signals with their facial expressions, their ears and the position of their body as a whole.”
But she specifies that felines and even humans risk misinterpreting the “confused messages” sent by a constantly curved tail. For one of the study co-authors, Daniel Mills, a veterinary behaviorist, it would be necessary to determine whether similar communication problems exist among the approximately seventy breeds of curled-tailed spitz dogs, adored by dog fans.
On a larger scale, the study highlights the need to consider how fashionable breeding traits can affect not only the physical health of animals, but also their social health, comments evolutionary ecologist Brittany Florkiewicz. On a more positive note, Sandra Nicholson praises the remarkable ability of cats to adapt to the individual variations of their conspecifics. An ability that we humans could borrow from furballs…
Source: www.slate.fr
