When a cat rubs your leg, what else may it be doing?
Show answer & explanation
Answer: Leaving familiar scent signals
Leaving familiar scent signals ✓ — Correct! Rubbing is partly social, but it is also chemical communication. Cats have scent glands around the cheeks, chin, head, body, and tail base. By rubbing you, the cat can mix familiar scents and mark you as part of its safe social world.
Testing if you are furniture — Wrong. Your leg may be furniture-shaped from a cat's height, but that is not the main mechanism. The better explanation is pheromone communication: leaving a familiar scent signal on an important person or pathway.
Polishing your ankles — Wrong. If cats polished ankles, every cat owner would have mirror-bright shins. The real action is less visible: scent molecules and pheromone information being deposited during contact.
More Animal Behavior questions
- A platypus lays eggs but feeds hatchlings milk without nipples. What makes that less contradictory?
- Male platypuses have venomous ankle spurs. Why are they probably not mainly prey-hunting tools?
- Platypuses have ~40,000 electroreceptors, but short-beaked echidnas have ~400. What best explains the drop?
- Why does a hunting platypus sweep its bill side to side instead of just pointing it forward?
- What can a platypus bill read from a shrimp's muscles rather than from water motion?
- When should you worry if a cat suddenly gets very clingy?