Why do cat mint make the "cat" crazy?

Wen | Jin Nan

Cat mint makes cats "crazy" -the latter will rub, roll and chew and lick it on cat mint.

It is generally believed that this plant, like Mu Tianyu, has the characteristics of being intoxicated by cats, but this may not be the only reason why cats are so enthusiastic about rubbing and chewing such plants.

Japanese researchers found that when cats chewed cat mints, this plant release a large amount of powerful mosquito repellent substances, which seems to protect the cat's damage to prevent victims.

On June 14, the relevant research was published in "Cross Science".

Image source: nils jacobi/shutterstock

Why does cat mint and Mu Tianyu have such "magic" to cats? The first author of the paper, the animal behavior researcher at Iwate University, Masao Miyazaki, hopes what happened.

Miyazaki's career began with veterinary medicine and became interested in how chemicals (such as pheromone) driving animal instincts.

The leaves of cat mint and wooden tadpoles contain nepetonate and nepetae tectoden mixture, which can protect plants from victims from violations.

In order to observe how the cat's behavior affects the plants to release chemicals, Miyazaki cooperates with the chemist at Nagoya University to find that the physical damage of the cat's pupa to Mu Tianyu has promoted the release of cyclopenne. Note.

Not only do plants release more cyclopyl ether crickets, but their ingredients have also changed.

Miyazaki said: "Among the complete leaves, more than 90%of the total amount of roden elene carrine compounds, but with the large increase in other cyclopen etherycodic compounds, in the damaged leaves, this one, this, this, this, this, this, this,,, to this,, to be damaged leaves, this, this, this one, this,,, to this,, to be damaged leaves, this, this,, The proportion drops to about 45%. "

In previous studies, the Miyazaki team proved that these compounds effectively repelled the white -textured mosquito.

Now, the team has proven that when cats destroy Mu Tianya through friction, rolling, licking, and chewing, the insect repellent performance of the mixture released by the leaves is stronger.

The diversity of cyclone ether crickets in these plant leaves makes them have a strong mosquito repellent effect even under low concentration.

In order to test whether the cat had a special response to these mixtures, the researchers provided cats with plates containing pure nepettea and nepettelisol.

Miyazaki said, "They lick the plastic plate, rub and roll on the plate."

"When the cyclopen ether mixture is applied to the bottom of the plate, and then covered with a perforated plastic cover, the cat still has the action of licking and chewing, although they cannot directly contact these chemicals."

Miyazaki said, "This means licking and chewing is an animal instinct caused by the olfactory stimulation of cyclopenne ether mixture."

Next, the Miyazaki team plans to understand which genes have caused cats' reactions to cat mint and Mu Tianyu.

"Our future research is expected to answer why this reaction is limited to cats, and why some cats have no response to these plants," Miyazaki said.

Related thesis information:

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ISCI.2022.104455

"China Science News" (2022-06-17 The 2nd edition of the original title "Where does the Mint" Magic "come from")

Edit | Zhao Lu

Capture | Guo Gang

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