[HN Gopher] Lateralized sleeping positions in domestic cats
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Lateralized sleeping positions in domestic cats
Author : EvgeniyZh
Score : 77 points
Date : 2025-06-26 18:38 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cell.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cell.com)
| iandanforth wrote:
| Am I crazy or are the cats pictured under the graph swapped? The
| cat under the "leftward" bar is curled the right and the cat
| under the "rightward" bar is curled to the left. Did they just
| decide that egocentrism in directions doesn't apply to cats?
| ohxh wrote:
| They say "thus, on average, about two-thirds of cats preferred
| to sleep on the left side of their body with their left
| shoulder down", and their image for leftward lateral bias shows
| this. So I guess leftward means "lying on their left side", not
| "curling left".
|
| But, they suggest this is because "Upon awakening, a leftward
| sleeping position would provide a fast left visual field view
| of objects", which seems suspect. When my cats sleep on their
| left, it's their left eye that's obscured by their paw, and
| their right eye that has a better field of view!
| grumblepeet wrote:
| I came here to say the same thing. I've seen this multiple
| times today in several places and thought exactly that. Maybe
| they should have said clockwise (starting at the head) or
| counterclockwise?
| jama211 wrote:
| They defined the terms in the article, as leftward is lying
| on their left side, left shoulder down.
| grumblepeet wrote:
| Ahh thanks. I see it in the article now. This why I'm not a
| scientist!
| apt-apt-apt-apt wrote:
| They say 'leftward sleeping position would provide a fast left
| visual field', while showing a cat sleeping on its left side,
| with its right eye having the best view (left eye with a bad
| view).
|
| Clearly, there is a contradiction. What's mystifying is that
| the authors seemingly spent lots of time on this exact
| directionality concept, yet put this contradiction in.
| bbzylstra wrote:
| Not a biologist, but my understanding is that the temporal
| part of the right eye (the part of the right eye closest to
| the temple and furthest from the nose) is responsible for
| processing the inner part of the left visual field, and is
| directly connected to the right hemisphere (no cross-over
| required).
| bombcar wrote:
| As mentioned before, this study is clearly funded by Big Cat
| to distract and confuse Big Mouse.
| oskarkk wrote:
| The way I understand it, they say that animals react better
| to danger coming from the left side, because the left visual
| field (of _both_ eyes) is processed by the right hemisphere,
| which is dominant for threat processing and spatial
| attention. So, for the cat sleeping on the left side the
| danger will probably come from the left side of its visual
| field, while for cat sleeping on the right side it would come
| from the right side of the visual field. Therefore, sleeping
| on the left side is better, because the cat will react faster
| to something coming towards it.
|
| Look at this picture to see how the image from both eyes is
| processed:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_system#/media/File:Huma.
| ..
|
| (this is for human visual system, but it's the same for a cat
| I guess?)
|
| The important thing is not the left/right eye, but the
| left/right side of _both_ eyes.
| wiredfool wrote:
| I prefer chirality for cats, they sleep either clockwise,
| counterclockwise, or possibly corkscrew.
| Isamu wrote:
| >To address this question, we analyzed 408 publicly available
| YouTube videos featuring a single cat in a clearly visible
| sleeping position while lying on one side, with an uninterrupted
| sleep duration of at least 10 seconds and full-body visibility
| from head to hind legs.
|
| 408 videos, showing bias towards leftward pose. They claim to
| have removed the mirrored videos from their samples.
| bombcar wrote:
| YouTube videos of sleeping cats could have a left-leaning bias!
|
| I wonder how you'd structure a proper study on this. Probably
| obtain a random selection of cat owners (slaves?) first.
| Fluorescence wrote:
| This matches my kitty.
|
| I noticed her preference because if I lie on my left-hand side,
| she is a very happy little spoon and uses my arm as a pillow.
|
| If I lie on my right-hand side, kitty is confused. She will take
| extra preparatory rotations hoping that one more turn will be
| enough for the problematic situation to resolve. After some hard
| stares, maybe an annoyed huff, she will reluctantly curl-up as a
| face-to-face non-spoon.
| pugworthy wrote:
| My boy Henry will always choose my right side, tucking under my
| arm and his head on my chest. Which is him in a "leftward"
| position then.
|
| He'll work out some kind of arrangement if I'm laying on my
| left side and he can't lay on his left, but if I'm lying on my
| back it's always to the right.
|
| It makes you wonder about cat-person compatibility based on the
| person's preference for how to lie down and the cat's
| preference.
| carabiner wrote:
| Previously submitted:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44371307
| jfengel wrote:
| I should take some data. I've got enough cats to border crazy-
| cat-lady territory. I had the impression that they sleep in
| random positions -- basically, whatever shape they were in when
| the urge to nap came upon them.
|
| I'll keep an eye on them and see if they have a preference that
| I'd missed. It won't be all that useful -- if nothing else, the
| specific preferred sleeping places of my house could have more to
| do with my layout than any underlying mechanism in the cat. But
| I'd kinda like to know if there has been something staring me in
| the face all this time and I just didn't put it together.
| a_e_k wrote:
| This is hilarious. While I work, one of my cats loves to share my
| desk chair and sleep between me and the backrest (forcing me to
| sit closer to the front edge). I've noticed she favors lying on
| her left flank there, and she is, in fact, sleeping behind me
| like this right now.
|
| (Anecdotal, but +1.)
|
| On the other hand, she's one of a bonded pair and I'll sometimes
| see her and her sister sleeping curled next to each other with
| more varied chirality. Maybe a trusted friend outweighs this
| effect?
| dhosek wrote:
| That does fit with the hypothesis of the paper.
| wbl wrote:
| I feel this publication could have used many more figures
| fyrn_ wrote:
| I agree, obviously purely for the scientific value of the
| sleeping cat pictures of course..
| em-bee wrote:
| i want the list of all 408 videos to verify the data and
| reproduce the results.
| bigiain wrote:
| "Hello Ma'am, we're from the government. We're here for
| your cat, the one in the YouTube video. We need it to
| attempt to reproduce scientific research."
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Cleaned up url: https://www.cell.com/current-
| biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(25)...
| lemming wrote:
| Wait till I tell my daughter that someone's job is watching cat
| videos on the internet for science!
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| They literally got paid to watch cat videos on the Internet.
| sonofhans wrote:
| Yes, that feels like some sort of event horizon, doesn't it? If
| you hook the humans up to a source of power it becomes self-
| sustaining ... for the cats.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| Humans domesticated dogs, cattle, chickens, and scores of
| other animals.
|
| Cats domesticated humans.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| My cat Emacs's signature move is the unlaterilized sploot, and I
| recently caught him sleeping on his back in an unlaterilized
| upside-down sploot!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splooting
|
| My tuxedo cat Napoleon is much more dignified, presenting a
| distinguished catloaf, while crossing his front paws with
| aristocratic grace.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cats_and_the_Internet#Catloaf
| dhosek wrote:
| I'd not encountered that term before. I'd always called it
| spatchcocking.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Oh my! Do not google that if you're a vegetarian, but do if
| you're a cat!
| psunavy03 wrote:
| Step 1: Learning to smoke meats.
|
| Step 2 (Optional and not recommended): Become snooty about
| how to prepare your poultry for being smoked.
| mcculley wrote:
| > we analyzed 408 publicly available YouTube videos
|
| Does YouTube provide a way to search and download videos for such
| research purposes? Or does one have to use some tool that works
| around YouTube's mechanisms that prevent downloading?
| sneak wrote:
| yt-dlp easily downloads everything/anything from youtube.
| amelius wrote:
| Did they check if the outcome is different on the southern
| hemisphere?
| thealistra wrote:
| The author declared no competing interests, but I bet they are a
| certified cat lover and therefore biased
| iainmerrick wrote:
| They're secretly funded by Big Cat.
| comrade1234 wrote:
| Wow. Is this really a Cell article? Congrats to the authors.
|
| Publishing in cell gets you a tenure track.
| dog436zkj3p7 wrote:
| No, it's a Current Biology article, a good journal from the
| Cell Press family of journals, but not quite Cell.
| comrade1234 wrote:
| I think this is the opposite for lions? I'm only going by the
| fact that the Buddha is shown sleeping on his right side all of
| the time and that this is called the lion pose (not the same as
| the yoga lion pose). He slept on his right side in the same way
| male lions sleep on their right side.
|
| (I first learned this because I was researching why when I
| meditated on my right side I would sometimes have hallucinogenic
| visions, but not on my left side - it was a surprise to come
| across this fact about the Buddha)
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