Do Cats Cause Schizophrenia: Schizophrenia is a serious mental disorder in which people interpret reality abnormally. Schizophrenia may result in some combination of hallucinations, delusions, and extremely disordered thinking and behavior that impairs daily functioning, and can be disabling. People with schizophrenia require lifelong treatment.
The current consensus is that there is a definite correlation between cats and schizophrenia, but it is unlikely that the animals are a causal factor in the development of the disorder. Basically, cats probably don’t actually cause someone to develop schizophrenia.
“Cats Don’t Cause Mental Illness.” The news headlines are as alarming as they are contradictory. All refer to Toxoplasma gondii, a brain parasite carried by our feline companions that infect roughly one in three people. Scientists have long hypothesized that T.
Do Cats Cause Schizophrenia?
Schizophrenia—any of several severe mental disorders having such symptoms as hallucinations. Disorganized thinking, withdrawal from reality. Or bizarre behavior—is produced by premature deterioration of the brain. This deterioration is usually a product of genetic predisposition combined with stress. But it can be accelerated by external diseases or parasites.
Schizophrenia affects only 1% of the population, although many people are predisposed to it but are never exposed to enough stress to exhibit any symptoms. How could cats possibly play a role in something so complicated?
Well, as it turns out, one of those potentially accelerating parasites can be found in our feline friends. Toxoplasma gondii, T. gondii for short, is a parasite that lives in raw meat and some garden soils. Cats become infected with it through consuming outdoor prey and then can pass it along to humans through their feces and litter boxes. So, does owning a cat make you susceptible to schizophrenia?
That’s just the thing—scientists still aren’t sure
That’s just the thing—scientists still aren’t sure. Though some studies have been done, none has been conclusive. The current consensus is that there is a definite correlation between cats and schizophrenia, but it is unlikely that the animals are a causal factor in the development of the disorder.
Basically, cats probably don’t actually cause someone to develop schizophrenia. The T. gondii found in some cats can cause cysts that accelerate premature brain deterioration, but such deterioration can happen only in individuals who are predisposed to schizophrenia.
About Cat
The cat is a domestic species of a small carnivorous mammal. It is the only domesticated species in the family Felidae and is often referred to as the domestic cat to distinguish it from the wild members of the family. A cat can either be a house cat, a farm cat, or a feral cat; the latter ranges freely and avoids human contact. Domestic cats are valued by humans for companionship and their ability to kill rodents. About 60 cat breeds are recognized by various cat registries.
The cat is similar in anatomy to the other felid species: it has a strong flexible body, quick reflexes, sharp teeth, and retractable claws adapted to killing small prey. Its night vision and sense of smell are well developed. Cat communication includes vocalizations like meowing, purring, trilling, hissing, growling, and grunting as well as cat-specific body language.
A predator that is most active at dawn and dusk (crepuscular), the cat is a solitary hunter but a social species. It can hear sounds too faint or too high in frequency for human ears, such as those made by mice and other small mammals. Cats also secrete and perceive pheromones.
Female domestic cats
Female domestic cats can have kittens from spring to late autumn, with litter sizes often ranging from two to five kittens. Domestic cats are bred and shown at events as registered pedigreed cats, a hobby known as cat fancy. Population control of cats may be affected by spaying and neutering, but their proliferation and the abandonment of pets have resulted in large numbers of feral cats worldwide, contributing to the extinction of entire bird, mammal, and reptile species.
Cats were first domesticated in the Near East around 7500 BC. It was long thought that cat domestication began in ancient Egypt, where cats were venerated from around 3100 BC. As of 2021, there were an estimated 220 million owned and 480 million stray cats in the world.
As of 2017, the domestic cat was the second-most popular pet in the United States, with 95.6 million cats owned and around 42 million households owning at least one cat. In the United Kingdom, 26% of adults have a cat with an estimated population of 10.9 million pet cats as of 2020.
Characteristics
However, here now, we are going to list and explain the following characteristics of a cat to you now. For more understanding about cats and everything, you need to know about them.
Here is the list of them:
1. Size
The domestic cat has a smaller skull and shorter bones than the European wildcat. It averages about 46 cm (18 in) in head-to-body length and 23–25 cm (9–10 in) in height, with about 30 cm (12 in) long tails. Males are larger than females. Adult domestic cats typically weigh between 4 and 5 kg (9 and 11 lb).
2. Skeleton
Cats have seven cervical vertebrae (as do most mammals); 13 thoracic vertebrae (humans have 12); seven lumbar vertebrae (humans have five); three sacral vertebrae (as do most mammals, but humans have five); and a variable number of caudal vertebrae in the tail (humans have only vestigial caudal vertebrae, fused into an internal coccyx). 11 The extra lumbar and thoracic vertebrae account for the cat’s spinal mobility and flexibility.
Attached to the spine are 13 ribs, the shoulder, and the pelvis. 16, Unlike human arms, cat forelimbs, are attached to the shoulder by free-floating clavicle bones which allow them to pass their body through any space into which they can fit their head.
3. Skull
The cat skull is unusual among mammals in having very large eye sockets and a powerful specialized jaw. 35 Within the jaw, cats have teeth adapted for killing prey and tearing meat. When it overpowers its prey, a cat delivers a lethal neck bite with its two long canine teeth, inserting them between two of the prey’s vertebrae and severing its spinal cord, causing irreversible paralysis and death.
Compared to other felines, domestic cats have narrowly spaced canine teeth relative to the size of their jaw, which is an adaptation to their preferred prey of small rodents, which have small vertebrae. The premolar and first molar together compose the carnassial pair on each side of the mouth, which efficiently shears meat into small pieces, like a pair of scissors. These are vital in feeding, since cats’ small molars cannot chew food effectively, and cats are largely incapable of mastication.
37 Although cats tend to have better teeth than most humans, with decay generally less likely because of a thicker protective layer of enamel, less damaging saliva, less retention of food particles between teeth, and a diet mostly devoid of sugar, they are nonetheless subject to occasional tooth loss and infection.
4. Claws
Cats have protractible and retractable claws. In their normal, relaxed position, the claws are sheathed with the skin and fur around the paw’s toe pads. This keeps the claws sharp by preventing wear from contact with the ground and allows the silent stalking of prey. The claws on the forefeet are typically sharper than those on the hind feet.
Cats can voluntarily extend their claws on one or more paws. They may extend their claws in hunting or self-defense, climbing, kneading, or for extra traction on soft surfaces. Cats shed the outside layer of their claw sheaths when scratching rough surfaces.
Most cats have five claws on their front paws, and four on their rear paws. The dewclaw is proximal to the other claws. More proximally is a protrusion which appears to be a sixth “finger”. This special feature of the front paws, on the inside of the wrists, has no function in normal walking but is thought to be an antiskidding device used while jumping. Some cat breeds are prone to having extra digits (“polydactyly”). Polydactylous cats occur along North America’s northeast coast and in Great Britain.
5. Ambulation
The cat is digitigrade. It walks on the toes, with the bones of the feet making up the lower part of the visible leg. Unlike most mammals, it uses a “pacing” gait and moves both legs on one side of the body before the legs on the other side. It registers directly by placing each hind paw close to the track of the corresponding fore paw, minimizing noise and visible tracks.
This also provides a sure footing for hind paws when navigating rough terrain. As it speeds up walking to trotting, its gait changes to a “diagonal” gait: The diagonally opposite hind and forelegs move simultaneously.
6. Balance
Most breeds of cats have a noted fondness for sitting in high places or perching. A higher place may serve as a concealed site from which to hunt; domestic cats strike prey by pouncing from a perch such as a tree branch. Another possible explanation is that height gives the cat a better observation point, allowing it to survey its territory. A cat falling from heights of up to 3 meters (9.8 ft) can right itself and land on its paws.
During a fall from a high place, a cat reflexively twists its body and rights itself to land on its feet using its acute sense of balance and flexibility. This reflex is known as the cat righting reflex. A cat always rights itself in the same way during a fall, if it has enough time to do so, which is the case in falls of 90 cm (2 ft 11 in) or more. How cats are able to right themselves when falling has been investigated as the “falling cat problem”.
Senses
Here is the list of cat sense organs you should know:
1. Vision
Cats have excellent night vision and can see at only one-sixth the light level required for human vision. 43 This is partly the result of cat eyes having a tapetum lucidum, which reflects any light that passes through the retina back into the eye, thereby increasing the eye’s sensitivity to dim light. Large pupils are an adaptation to dim light. The domestic cat has slit pupils, which allow it to focus bright light without chromatic aberration.
At low light, a cat’s pupils expand to cover most of the exposed surface of its eyes. The domestic cat has rather a poor color vision and only two types of cone cells, optimized for sensitivity to blue and yellowish green; its ability to distinguish between red and green is limited. A response to middle wavelengths from a system other than the rod cells might be due to the third type of cone. This appears to be an adaptation to low light levels rather than representing true trichromatic vision.
2. Hearing
The domestic cat’s hearing is most acute in the range of 500 Hz to 32 kHz. It can detect an extremely broad range of frequencies ranging from 55 Hz to 79,000 Hz. It can hear a range of 10.5 octaves, while humans and dogs can hear ranges of about 9 octaves. Its hearing sensitivity is enhanced by its large movable outer ears, the pinnae, which amplify sounds and help detect the location of a noise.
It can detect ultrasound, which enables it to detect ultrasonic calls made by rodent prey. Recent research has shown that cats have socio-spatial cognitive abilities to create mental maps of owners’ locations based on hearing owners’ voices. The ability to track something out of sight is called object permanence and it is found in humans, primates, and some non-primates.
3. Smell
Cats have an acute sense of smell, due in part to their well-developed olfactory bulb and a large surface of olfactory mucosa, about 5.8 square centimeters (29⁄32 square inch) in area, which is about twice that of humans. Cats and many other animals have a Jacobson’s organ in their mouths that is used in the behavioral process of flehmening. It allows them to sense certain aromas in a way that humans cannot.
Cats are sensitive to pheromones such as 3-mercapto-3-methyl butane-1-ol, which they use to communicate through urine spraying and marking with scent glands. Many cats also respond strongly to plants that contain nepetalactone. Especially catnip, as they can detect that substance at less than one part per billion. About 70–80% of cats are affected by nepetalactone. This response is also produced by other plants, such as silver vine (Actinidia polygama) and the herb valerian; it may be caused by the smell of these plants mimicking a pheromone and stimulating cats’ social or sexual behaviors.
4. Taste
Cats have relatively few taste buds compared to humans (470 or so versus more than 9,000 on the human tongue). Domestic and wild cats share a taste receptor gene mutation that keeps their sweet taste buds from binding to sugary molecules, leaving them with no ability to taste sweetness. Their taste buds instead respond to acids, amino acids like protein, and bitter tastes.
Cats also have a distinct temperature preference for their food. Preferring food with a temperature around 38 °C (100 °F) which is similar to that of a fresh kill. And routinely rejecting food presented cold or refrigerated (which would signal to the cat that the “prey” item is long dead and therefore possibly toxic or decomposing).
5. Whiskers
To aid with navigation and sensation, cats have dozens of movable whiskers (vibrissae) over their body, especially their faces. These provide information on the width of gaps and on the location of objects in the dark, both by touching objects directly and by sensing air currents; they also trigger protective blink reflexes to protect the eyes from damage.
In Conclusion
However, if there is anything you think we are missing. Don’t hesitate to inform us by dropping your advice in the comment section.
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