Why is it that cats prefer to sleep on one side? I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it again and again and again: who knows why cats do anything? Just over the course of today, my cat purred at me, bristled at me and attacked a paperclip as if it had offended her honour.
Putting this fundamental truth to one side, recent research published in Current Biology suggests that cats have a preference for sleeping on their left side. Of course, they do. That’s exactly the sort of contrary, counterintuitive stunt that cats would pull.
Only, there could actually be a good reason for it. Cats sleep. A lot. And people like taking films of them. A lot. So, there’s no shortage of sleeping cat videos on YouTube. Taking advantage of this fact, researchers from Europe and Canada analysed 408 films of sleeping cats, and found that in two-thirds of them, the left side was favoured.
Lots of animals have a consistent preference for one side of the body. This is known as behavioural lateralisation. Most people, for example, are right-handed, while most kangaroos are left-handed. Asian elephants often have a preferred forefoot and also, a preferred direction of trunk curl.
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