by Cats prefer to sleep on their left side to protect themselves from predators, as a study found.
The pets sleep for up to 16 hours a day and often ripple in favorable places.
But the way the animal settles is not accidental, and there is an evolutionary -wired logic that she underpins, according to a study by the Ruhr University Bochum in Germany.
Scientists found that cats are on the left by two thirds of the time, which shows that it was made on purpose.
They looked at clips on YouTube of more than 400 sleeping cats and recorded on which side on which they slept.
Data showed that 266 of the cats (66.5 percent) stood on their left side and scientists made the conclusion that this was a survival feature of their history in the wild.
If you sleep on your left side, your left eye can see the region that is not in the body of the cat without fruit structure. This visual information is then processed from the right side of the brain.
This hemisphere processes the threats and is responsible for the detachment of the danger and for the knowledge of the position of a single animal.
This brings the cat into an advantage in comparison if it should sleep on the right – if the information is processed from the left side of the brain, which is less specialized in supporting a quick escape.
Anti-Predator growth
This preference to the left is only one of the many ways that cats protect themselves.
“Sleep is one of the most endangered conditions for an animal, since the vigilance of the anti-predators, especially in deep sleep phases, is drastically reduced,” the study says.
“House cats are both predators and prey (e.g. for coyotes) and sleep on average 12–16 hours a day.
“Therefore, they spend almost 60-65% of their lifespan in a very endangered state. In order to reduce the risks of predators, cats prefer to rest in increased positions, so that predators are more visible to them and the cats.
“In such a place, predators can only access cats from below. Therefore, their preference for calm in an increased position of comfort, security and a clear viewpoint for monitoring their environments can offer.
“We put the hypothesis that a lateralized sleeping position quickly grasp the likelihood of grasping predators (or to identify carelessly loot) when they wake up.”
Threatening processing to the left
Experts believe pregnant cows prefer their left side while sleeping for a similar reason. The scientists also found that a cat’s treat, regardless of whether it preferred her left or right side, is probably not responsible for the sleeping preference.
A 2017 study showed that male cats tend to prefer their left -wing paws, and women dominate rights.
“We are inclined to assume that the significant left -wing bias in the sleeping position in cats may have been controlled by hemispheric asymmetries of threats,” added the scientists in their work, which was published in the magazine Current Biology.
