If you pinch the back of a cat's neck, will it be "acupunctured"?

Nowadays, there are more and more cat owners who love to keep cats. Perhaps some people have discovered that if you pinch the flesh on the back of a cat's neck, it will be like being acupunctured and unable to move. Is it possible that cats are not afraid of pain on this part of their skin? Why do they behave this way?

1. Strange clamp hypnosis Someone has done an experiment in the laboratory, clamping the back of a cat's neck with a binder clip, and cats of different ages and genders will become obedient. Their backs are arched, and their tails are clamped between their legs. When people are in pain, they will curl up into a ball, but cats clamped by the clamp do not show characteristics such as dilated pupils, rapid breathing, and accelerated heartbeats. So, they are not in pain when they are clamped, but feel very comfortable. Scientists call this phenomenon "clip hypnosis."

In fact, the phenomenon of clamp hypnosis occurs in most mammals, such as squirrels, raccoons, dogs, lions, bears, etc. Except for primates and sloths that can hold their babies in their hands, and herbivores whose babies can walk at birth, almost all other mammals use this method to transfer their babies. Other animals besides mammals either do not have soft skin or teeth, so they cannot carry their babies in their mouths.

So, why bite the back of the neck? According to the body structure of most mammals, the limbs and tail are not easy to hold, so only the back and neck can be used as the force bearing points, and the neck is usually of suitable size. If the child is very small, then biting the back is also OK. As for anteaters and pangolins that cannot open their mouths, they can only be carried on the back. You ask me what to do with hedgehogs? They stay in their nests until they can't run.

Therefore, after being bitten, the animal gets a signal - "Mom is going to take me", so it cooperates and stays still. Even adult cats will immediately enter the childhood state. Many people may worry that this instinct will make them get eaten in the wild, but in fact it will not. Because although predators also bite the neck, they will kill the prey in a snap. They will not be patient enough to bite the skin on the back of the neck to hypnotize and then kill the prey.

However, if the animal is heavy enough, it will be painful to lift it by the neck, and it will resist. For example, when lions or tigers mate, the male will bite the female's neck to fix the position. However, the female is not comfortable when bitten, and will bite back immediately after the deed is done. In many animal documentaries, we often see lizards, frogs and other animals lying on their backs, motionless and in a hypnotic state, but this hypnosis is actually a self-protection of pretending to be dead, rather than a truly safe migration behavior.

However, there is a kind of mammals that do not have necks, such as dolphins. How can they be hypnotized? The answer is that dolphins cannot be hypnotized because the corpus callosum between the left and right brains is very special. Its left and right brains can sleep in turn, so they do not have the ability to enter a hypnotic state.

2. Why can cats stretch? When petting cats, we will find a strange phenomenon: cats seem to be generally smaller than dogs. Among dogs, there are particularly long dachshunds, but no one seems to have seen dachshund cats. Some playful netizens came up with an idea: since cats can be as soft as liquid, what will happen if they are stretched? So many people really studied cats and found that they seem to have eaten rubber fruit, and their bodies can stretch to an unimaginable length.

Why do cats have this skill? Let's first take a look at their family background. Modern domestic cats are most likely descendants of the Egyptian desert cat, which has coexisted with humans for 3,500 years, but due to their low degree of cooperation, they have not yet been fully domesticated like dogs.

Cats have 290 bones in their body, of which vertebrae are 5 more than humans. The cat's body is so flexible, and it can become a yoga master among animals. The key role is the trunk skeleton. The trunk skeleton includes the bones of the spine and chest contour, a total of 58 to 85 bones. The cat's spine bones are all irregular bones, and the ribs are long arched bones. Moreover, these bones are relatively small, which makes the cat's chest deep and narrow, which is conducive to the compression of the sternum.

The joints of a cat's entire body, especially the cartilage and ligaments of the cervical spine, are obviously softer than those of other animals. Another thing you may have noticed is that cats have narrow shoulders because their collarbones have degenerated a lot, which is very helpful for them to pass through narrow places.

Cats love to crawl into small containers because of their flexible bodies. Studies have found that cats' love for crawling into boxes is related to their living habits formed in ancient times. Wild cats like to crawl into tree holes or rock cracks to sleep because those places are small and many large animals cannot get in, so cats will sleep safely. Although cats have been pampered for many years, their nature of crawling into small spaces has not changed.

Of course, in addition to cats, other cats are also very flexible. Even the largest cat, the tiger, can get into a large cardboard box. This may be the collective subconscious left by our common ancestors. When a cat stretches its spine, it can be clearly seen to be much longer than usual. Other cats such as tigers, leopards, and cheetahs also have this movement. Some yoga movements are imitating the way cats stretch their spines.

The flexibility of cats makes their hunting ability far superior to that of dogs, so cats except lions hunt alone, while dogs basically attack their prey in groups. In addition, cats have claws that allow them to climb trees, and even tigers that are said to be unable to climb trees can climb trees. However, many inexperienced cats can climb up, but do not know how to get down, so they can only stay in the tree and wait for human rescue.