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As long as you have ever had a cat, it is not difficult to find that they all have an Achilles' heel, commonly known as the "back neck of fate". As long as you hold it here, it's like pressing the off button, and the cat becomes very clever and docile, and you can play with it.

Cub: it doesn't matter, just a little tired. Gifer, in fact, not only do humans hold cats' necks like this, but if you watch Animal World, you will find that many adult female cats help those who can't walk well by biting their cubs when they move their cubs, whether in daily foraging or avoiding predators. Over time, the cat forms a conditioned reflex. When the cub is held in the mouth, it will tighten its body and be still. This reaction will not only help the mother cat to improve her efficiency of action, but also avoid falling because of mischievous movements.

Therefore, when people pinch the back of their necks, kittens will mistakenly think that they are from their mother's loving behavior. This conditioned reflex, named pinch-induced behavioral inhibition (pinch-induced behavioral inhibition,PIBI), is characterized by the curling and arching of the animal's spine, the rest of the body and the obediently sandwiched tail between the two hind legs.

Cat: first of all, I'm not messing with any of you. [1] however, pinching the back of a cat's neck to inhibit their activity is not applicable to all cats, and this response weakens with age. Researchers used 142 cats (72 females and 70 males) and three clips to observe pinch-induced behavioral inhibition and found that all kittens had corresponding conditioned reflexes, but nearly half of adult cats were indifferent. In addition, the effect of pinch-induced behavioral inhibition decreased more significantly in male cats than in female cats.

If your cat has been away from your mother for two or three years and has grown into a greasy cat weighing more than ten kilograms, the International Cat Care Association and the International Cat Disease Association do not recommend that they be controlled in this way. Part of the reason is that as they get older, they may forget and lack the corresponding response mechanism, but will produce stress reactions and more intense defensive attacks because they suddenly leave the ground; another part of the reason is that they may be too heavy for the neck muscles to bear the weight, resulting in damage to the soft tissue of the cat's neck.

There are many mild measures to reduce stress on cats while controlling them, such as wrapping them in an oversized blanket.

(photo Source vetstreet.com) Tigers, which are both cats and have 96% similar genes, will also produce the same pinch-induced behavior inhibition when they hold the back of their necks?

The answer is yes, this is not a cat's unique stunt. Although the researchers did not directly use clips to clip tigers, lions and other animals to do experiments, but through long-term behavioral observation, when these animals picked up the cubs, the cubs' expressions and movements were almost the same as those of the trapped kittens. The back neck meat is indeed their "dead point".

Lion cub: mom! Slow down, please! | YouTube in 2013, Japanese neurobiologists wrote on Current Biology that cubs experience a series of physiological responses such as heart deceleration, silence and stopping crying when picked up by their mother, and similar calming effects also exist in human babies.

The researchers compared the experimental group that anesthetized the motor sensory nerve on the back neck of the young rats with the control group without any treatment, and found that the sedative effect of the experimental group was significantly reduced after picking it up again. This means that young mice will not curl up if they cannot feel the back of the neck being caught.

At the same time, the researchers surgically removed part of the mouse brain to interfere with incoming signals from the cerebellar cortex and found that after picking up the mice, they could not curl up and immediately calm down. This shows that the decrease of heart rate and the change of posture are realized by the parasympathetic nerve and the conduction nerve of the cerebellum.

On the left is the untreated control group, and on the right is the experimental group with anaesthetized motor sensory nerves. Coincidentally, this study also explains another problem: compared with sitting and coaxing the baby, holding them while moving while calming them will make it easier for babies to calm down and fall asleep.

The researchers set up three groups of experiments in which babies were placed in a crib (CRIB group), held by a mother sitting in a chair (group H), or held by a mother who walked continuously (group C). The results showed that all measurements (crying, limb movement and heart rate) increased generally in the CRIB group, but decreased significantly in the C group.

The baby's heart rate shows a trend of rising-decreasing-rising again. [2] researchers believe that walking in the arms of a mother is the most behavioral-related stimulus. this may be more effective than other types of rhythmic exercise (such as mechanical shaking) to calm the baby.

Perhaps it was because the babies received a signal from their mother that they were moving themselves, so they decided not to cry and make it easier for their mother to take them to a safer place. And this sedative response to maternal transport may be formed even before the baby is born.

Cover source: Flickr

Reference:

[1] https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jveb.2021.11.003

[2] https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2013.03.041

This article is from the official Wechat account: bring Science Home (ID:steamforkids), author: everything.

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