Skyler Ware is a freelance science journalist covering chemistry, biology, paleontology and Earth science. She was a 2023 AAAS Mass Media Science and Engineering Fellow at Science News. Her work has also appeared in Science News Explores, ZME Science and Chembites, among others. Skyler has a Ph.D. in chemistry from Caltech.
Fetch is a game inextricably tied to dogs. But new research shows that cats play fetch, too — maybe more than you thought.
"During the domestication of dogs, we have selected them for some specific behaviors, such as retrieving, that probably explain to a larger extent why behavior is much more common in dogs," study co-author Mikel Delgado, an animal behaviorist at Purdue University in Indiana, said in an interview with PLOS One provided to Live Science.
In a survey of more than 8,000 cat owners, the researchers found that 40.9% of cats play fetch"sometimes,""usually" or"always." And plenty of cats engage in other carrying activities, even if they don't fetch: Nearly 58% of cats carry toys around, and 39% bring their owners a toy to kick off playtime.
The team also looked into fetching behavior in dogs . Perhaps unsurprisingly, dogs were more likely than cats to play fetch: A survey of over 73,000 dog owners found that almost 78% of dogs played fetch at least sometimes, with retrievers, poodles, pointers and spaniels most likely to engage in the behavior. Retrievers in particular — as the name suggests — were bred to"fetch" game for hunters.
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