Cat lover? Here’s a chance to do your favourite thing for research — watch cat videos

• A new research requires people who own two cats to understand cat-cat interaction.
• It will involve watching cat videos showing extremely negative and positive behaviour.
• The study aims to investigate cat-owners' knowledge of inter-cat behavior.

Scientists at the University of California Davis and The University of British Columbia are looking for cat lovers who own two cats. This is for research that will help interpret cat-to-cat interactions and eventually help cat owners better understand their cats. It’s always a task when you bring another cat home or even dogs for that matter. It takes some time for the cats to warm up to each other and if you’re lucky they both just agree to tolerate each other. This research might just help make things easier for you and your cats.

The research participants will be shown ten cat videos showcasing different types of positive and negative cat-cat interactions, and asked to rate them from extremely positive to extremely negative. The scores of the cat owners will be compared to those given by cat behaviorists who will also watch the same videos. Cat owners will also be asked how often their own cats display similar behaviours as those in the videos.

The reason behind calling cat owners for this experiment is because of the knowledge they hold when it comes to inter-cat interactions which is also used by veterinarians to assess cat health and welfare. “The results of this study will be used to help understand the limitations that owner-reports have and devise better tactics to assess cat behavior and welfare in the home environment,” the researchers explained.

The results of this study are expected to help in cat owner education or if any new kinds of methods can be adopted for such situations. It’s still a mystery to understand what’s going on in a cat’s mind but studying their behavior can help in predicting what they want or how they’re feeling.

While this research sounds interesting and fun, it’s available only to people residing in the US and Canada. You have to be at least 18 years of age, and obviously own two cats at home.

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