Cats and dogs chasing their tails are cute? They may have obsessive-compulsive disorder!

Those of you who have cats and dogs at home should be familiar with this behavior.

The cat at Calendar Girl's colleague's house has a perpetual motion toy tail｜Mai Mai

Sometimes, your pet will suddenly become interested in its own tail. It is not enough to touch and play with it, but it will chase its tail and spin around like crazy, as if it has completely forgotten that the tail is a part of itself. On the Internet platform, such videos are also very popular: owners share videos of their cats and dogs chasing their tails, and the comments or comments are "cute!" and "This is the real use of the tail."

When you laugh at animals chasing their tails, you probably didn't expect that there are people who specialize in studying tail-chasing behavior. Someone even published a high-impact journal article by watching and analyzing all the videos of dogs chasing their tails on YouTube. What kind of behavior is this, and why is it so worth studying?

Waltz, Op. 64 No. 1 in D-Flat Major "Minute Waltz"

Chopin's Puppy Waltz was inspired by a puppy chasing its tail...

Rationally speaking, the tail is part of the body.

First of all, we need to figure out what cats and dogs are "thinking" when they chase their tails. Do they not know that the tail is a part of themselves, and chase or attack the tail as an imaginary prey or enemy?

Yes, but not entirely.

Cat Tornado｜Giphy

From an anatomical perspective, cats and dogs undoubtedly have full control over their tails - we can even say that they can feel and control their tails as freely as we can feel and control our own hands.

Take dogs as an example. Their tails are not only rich in muscles and blood vessels, but also have coccygeal nerves on the coccyx. The coccyx is essentially an extension of the spine, so the coccygeal nerves on the coccyx are also part of the spinal nerves, and their immediate superior is the central nervous system we are familiar with. Humans whose tails have degenerated only have one pair of coccygeal nerves, but dogs have 4 to 7 pairs. The extensions of the coccygeal nerves include numerous muscular branches and cutaneous branches. The former are used to control the movement of the tail muscles, while the latter are responsible for transmitting the stimuli sensed on the skin of the tail to the brain.

There are abundant coccygeal nerves on the dog's coccyx｜"Miller's Canine Anatomy"

Simply put, these tail aliens can both sense and control every part from the base of the tail to the tip of the tail, and they are excellent at micro-manipulation.

Even if we don't know this, we often see cats and dogs flexibly manipulating their tails to maintain balance, express emotions, etc., and they will feel obvious pain when their tails are stepped on. All of this shows that animals, in a rational state, will know that their tails are part of themselves.

But, in irrational situations...

The reason why I emphasize "under rational conditions" is that when cats and dogs are madly chasing their tails in circles, they are actually in a state of "non-self-control" to a certain extent. In other words, this is the "call of the wild" from their ancestors.

Cats and dogs are descended from hunters, so they have a hunting instinct in their bones. In the wild, it is common for kittens to learn hunting techniques from their parents and try hunting through play with their peers. Even if domestic cats are "socially isolated" from an early age and cannot learn from their mothers or siblings, they can still show hunting practice behaviors before weaning. This hunting behavior is actually seen by many people - when a domestic cat chases a cat teaser, it actually regards the cat teaser as prey.

In the eyes of kittens, cat teasers are prey丨pixabay

For this kind of behavior that is driven by instinct and does not require learning, there is a professional term in animal behavior called "fixed action pattern".

Even if they have never come into contact with real prey, when animals are in a fixed behavioral pattern of "hunting", they will spontaneously respond to any moving objects in their field of vision that resemble prey, and these similar objects include cat toys, plush balls, frisbees, and... their own tails!

The moment they see the target, the hunter's instinct will override everything, causing them to temporarily forget the rational control of their tails, just to perform this "survival skill exercise" - even if domestic cats and dogs have no shortage of food, they still need the pleasure of "hunting". This real sense of pleasure comes from their reward mechanism that has evolved over millions of years. In other words, cats and dogs chasing their tails is just a temporary "excitement", but when they come to their senses, they can still naturally and calmly control their tails for their own use.

In addition to energetic pups in their learning period who are more likely to chase their tails, working dog breeds such as hounds and shepherds, which once held important positions and therefore required more aggressiveness, are also more likely to chase their tails | Alona Rjabceva

But behind the cuteness, there may be obsessive-compulsive disorder

That's it? Is it worth studying so much that the hunting instinct continues to this day as a playful behavior?

Of course not! In most studies, the behavior of cats and dogs chasing their tails too much is actually studied as a disease. This is one of the typical symptoms of "feline/canine obsessive-compulsive disorder."

Rear-end collisions may also be a symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder｜Giphy

Obsessive-compulsive disorder in cats and dogs is similar to that in humans and is a relatively common psychological disorder in cats and dogs. Sick animals will frequently repeat certain behaviors every day (one typical behavior is chasing their tails), even though these behaviors usually only consume time and energy and do them no good. Once obsessive-compulsive disorder becomes serious, it may also affect daily life, leading to loss of appetite and malnutrition. Moreover, this repetitive state is often difficult to break. If you try to force the animals to stop, they may show hostility or even attack their owners.

Remember the study done by watching YouTube videos mentioned at the beginning of the article? Although the researchers watched cute videos, they seriously pointed out the following question: In these videos that make the owners and viewers laugh, how many dogs chasing their tails are just playing happily, and how many are actually suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder?

The researchers watched these videos to conduct their research. | Reference [2]

Through analysis, the researchers obtained surprising results: in all videos of dogs chasing their tails, 56% of small dogs, 43% of hybrid dogs, and 42% of working dogs or hounds showed a state of "difficulty in distraction", and some of their owners mentioned words such as "every day", "can't stop", and "don't eat anything when they see it" in the video, all of which mean that they have obsessive-compulsive disorder. In addition, there are 5 videos in which the dogs have obvious tail injuries and hair loss, which is likely caused by compulsive tail chasing.

However, regardless of the severity of the dogs' tail-chasing, there was not a single comment expressing concern for their health under these videos. The most common comments were "funny" or "cute". Even those dogs who couldn't stop chasing their tails and were most likely to be sick were more likely to receive comments like "so stupid".

In fact, those cats and dogs whose conditions are so serious that they are taken to the hospital are difficult to treat through ordinary behavioral correction. They may be left alone by their owners, or even abandoned or euthanized... However, if the owners can realize that this is a disease early and seek medical treatment early, there is still a high probability that the pets can recover their physical and mental health.

Create a fun environment for your pet｜Giphy

Of course, if you have a baby who loves to spin in circles at home, you don’t have to worry too much. From the perspective of the factors that lead to obsessive-compulsive disorder in cats and dogs, in addition to innate factors such as breed and genes, the acquired growth environment is equally important.

When cats and dogs are stressed or bored, they will feel anxious, which will trigger the rewarding behavior of chasing their tails to relieve anxiety. After many times, the animals get used to this behavior, and the threshold of anxiety triggered becomes lower and lower, until it eventually develops into obsessive-compulsive disorder, affecting daily life.

Therefore, if you have provided your baby with a happy, carefree, safe and companionable living environment, you can be more confident - when they chase their tails, they are probably just entertaining themselves!

References

[1] Ahola, MK, Vapalahti, K., & Lohi, H. (2017). Early weaning increases aggression and stereotypic behavior in cats. Scientific reports, 7(1), 10412.

[2] Burn CC (2011). A vicious cycle: a cross-sectional study of canine tail-chasing and human responses to it, using a free video-sharing website. PloS one, 6(11), e26553.

[3] Cecchetti, M., Crowley, SL and McDonald, RA (2021), Drivers and facilitators of hunting behavior in domestic cats and options for management. Mam Rev, 51, 307-322.

[4] Evans, HE, de, LA, & Miller, ME (2013). Miller's anatomy of the dog. St. Louis (Mo): Elsevier Saunders.

[5] Fixed action pattern. (2021, November 10) . In Wikipedia. Retrieved January 26, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_action_pattern[6] Overall, KL, & Dunham, AE (2002). Clinical features and outcome in dogs and cats with obsessive-compulsive disorder: 126 cases (1989-2000). Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, 221(10), 1445–1452.

[7] Tail Chasing. (2021, September 27). In Wikipedia. Retrieved January 26, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tail_chasing

[8] Thalmann O., Perri AR (2018) Paleogenomic Inferences of Dog Domestication. In: Lindqvist C., Rajora O. (eds) Paleogenomics. Population Genomics. Springer, Cham.

[9] Tiira, K., Hakosalo, O., Kareinen, L., Thomas, A., Hielm-Björkman, A., Escriou, C., Arnold, P., & Lohi, H. (2012). Environmental effects on compulsive tail chasing in dogs. PloS one, 7(7), e41684. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0041684

Author:yab

Editor: Mai Mai

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