Cats rely heavily on scent to learn about one another, often gathering information from urine and other odor marks left behind in their surroundings. These chemical traces can continue communicating long after the animal that produced them has moved on. Many odor molecules evaporate, break down, or change with time.
If a scent is constantly evolving, how can another animal still determine who originally left it? Researchers from Japan, Germany, and Spain, led by Iwate University, may have found part of the answer in domestic cats. Their experiments point to a group of unusual fatty acids that could serve as a lasting chemical signature in cat urine.
The scientists identified 13 branched-chain fatty acids (BFAs). The particular mixture and proportions of these compounds varied from one cat to another, yet remained relatively consistent within the same animal. Behavioral tests also showed that cats could detect differences between BFA profiles when the researchers controlled for other lipids in the urine.
The findings suggest that BFAs could function as a durable chemical "calling card" that helps preserve information about individual identity. The study will be published in Current Biology. Before searching for the chemicals involved, the researchers first needed to establish that cats could distinguish urine from different individuals.
When cats encountered the same urine sample repeatedly, they gradually spent less time investigating it. But when urine from a different cat was introduced, their interest rose again, and they spent more time sniffing. Remarkably, cats continued to show reduced responses to previously encountered urine odors even after gaps lasting months.
That pattern suggests that cats may retain long-term memories of particular urine scents. Researchers also examined the flehmen response, the characteristic open-mouthed expression often seen when cats investigate certain odors. Cats displayed this response more often when smelling unfamiliar urine than when smelling their own.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
