Why do cats knead? | Hacker News Reader

Why do cats knead?

livescience.com

214 pointsbookofjoe109 comments

> Why do cats knead?

> So why do cats knead? Although the reason is uncertain, the most likely explanation is that it is a leftover behavior from kittenhood, Susan Hazel, an associate professor of animal behavior, welfare and ethics at the University of Adelaide in Australia, told Live Science. During nursing, a kitten rhythmically treads its paws on the mother's body to stimulate the flow of milk.

The answer is speculation. Yeah, that would be my guess too, but do we really need "science" for that? (and by science I mean some authority figure that apparently has a title)

This looks much more like what TV sells us as "the science".

For it to be science we need a way to do an experiment or to make a comparison. Perhaps one could be; If it's believed to be related to nursing, then perhaps we need to know if kittens abandoned early on and hand fed also knead?

We don’t know in adults, kittens stimulate milk production from it is the answer from science, that’s not speculation.

Adults continuing the behavior from kitten hood is speculation not a scientific consensus.

> Adults continuing the behavior from kitten hood is speculation not a scientific consensus.

There is scientific consensus. All animals do continue on early behaviors. Kneading is partially learning (nurture) and partly instinct (nature).

Speculating there is a specific reason beyond these knowns, contains a baseless assumption.

All animals continue some early behaviors but not all early behaviors are maintained by all animals.

The default is thus “we don’t know” instead of inferences from known data.

I dont know what you mean by 'default'. Inference and deduction is widely used across behavioralism, primarily because it has yielded useful models. I see no reason that it should be discounted, as a valid approach, in pursuit of an absolute truth by some other standard.

Because if inferences and deduction where enough people wouldn’t bother with experiments.

The default must be “we don’t know” to avoid the stagnation like 10 million philosophy books which don’t actually advance anything. Thus the article’s "I think there is… because you can follow “We don’t know, …” with a great deal of personal supposition but that’s all it is.

> Because if inferences and deduction where enough people wouldn’t bother with experiments.

Yet humans do, well beyond experimental evidence. Notably theoretical insert science. This is not directly relevant, but interesting to think about. I really appreciated Feynman's distinction between Physics and Mathematics.

We don't know if humans become addicted to alcohol due to ingestion or genetic predisposition, as it could be invisible fairies that live in the subatomic spaces of alcohol picking their favorites.

Suffice to say, what you and I are arguing for is no more truth than any other model of reality that provides the same answers. I don't see why requiring more specific experimental evidence is more scientific.

> I don’t see why requiring more specific experimental evidence is more scientific.

Even if you don’t understand why there’s plenty of examples showing this is how “theoretical sciences” operate.

Prior to discovering the Higgs Boson the underlying verbiage was all some variation on “we don’t know, but…” Only after the experiment is that default changed.

The Higgs is a great example because there were several competing theories suggesting various energies for the particle most of which failed when actual data showed up. Which you always get for such open questions, thus the lack of consensus and the default “we don’t know.”

It's not science, it's speculation from someone with experience in the field. I don't think this was sold as a scientific conclusion

I know this is naive, but I still reflexively expect content from publications with “science” in their name to be predominantly scientific for a few moments before I remember where I live.

"Why" cannot possibly be science; it is rather teleology and the answer is ultimately "because" (phrased as "because god" if you want to stir up shit).

I suspect that might be right. Just like parrots will "groom" a person's hair like they were feathers.

I hope nobody decide to approve grant for scientific research on that, because it will involve cutting limbs, opening skulls and other types of vivisections that scientists love so much. Result also be very far from certainty with some numbers and experiments conditions. But of course it will produce several phds and may be even whole professor.

Article gives two reasons: " 1. in the presence of someone with whom they feel safe ... because they associate the behavior of treading their paws with the comfort they felt when they were nursing

2. It's possible kneading can be used to deposit scent... to mark territory."

Some dogs like to suckle on your arm (or small squishy) well into their adulthood, so I suppose #1 makes sense.

The explanation I always heard was that they were removed from their mother too soon, and I stopped buying that explanation several years ago.

I don’t know about every cat I’ve ever had, but my youngest currently? I think there’s two reasons she does it: 1. To announce her presence on top of me and make it known she is pleased her bed is in bed and 2. To make the spot more comfortable, like how we fluff our pillows or smooth out our bedspreads or whatever. She’s making the spot hers.

I mean it is an action that can also deposit their scent, but uh, in my experience my cats have never respected that marker if they don’t want to.

I have 3 cats still living with their mother and they all do it. She had a strong maternal instinct, but lost it once they grew up, and now she hates all of them, which is apparently the expected behaviour.

Our cat was older and once the kittens got into a phase of "play hard, play always" I think it annoyed her to the point of madness :-)

I have an elderly cat that is fine with dogs, but can't stand the other 2 much younger and stronger cats.

I think some human mothers probably go through that.

The explanation I always heard was that they were removed from their mother too soon, and I stopped buying that explanation several years ago.

Interesting. I've never heard that explanation. It doesn't line up with my experience either. In 2007 I took in a stray cat I found wandering in a parking lot. She was pregnant and gave birth to 5 kittens. She died a few years ago but I kept her with her offspring for her whole life. Her descendants knead as much as she did.

I have heard the same explanation. And first time I heard it was pre-internet era in non English speaking country, so it must be somewhat common believe.

Cats suckling on things (usually wool shirts or blankets) into adulthood is a sign they were removed from their mother too soon, but I've never heard that about kneading. I just assumed it was normal for a cat that's happy, safe, and comfortable.

I think your making the spot comfortable explanation is very compelling.

> she is pleased her bed is in bed

ISWYDT

I notice that my cat really enjoys doing it. She gets into a euphoric/hypnotic state purring more loudly than she does when stroked. Just totally lost in bliss.

It may have a real function in other situations (milk production) but I believe the proximal cause for her nightly kneading is simply how good it feels which puts her straight to sleep afterwards. I expect it releases a lot of oxytocin/opoid type neurotransmitters. It makes me feel a little.... used. Not to mention the pain!

A family member has a cat like yours and introduced me to the regrettable phrase "sexual biscuit-making". As if it wasn't weird enough already.

I. love. this.

I will never look at my cat the same way again.

Just wait until you own a cat that goes into heat and sexually harasses you for two weeks straight. I can never un-know what a degenerate little pervert my cat is.

Yeah, sometimes I kind of think my cats are twerking. (And I apologize to HN readers for using that word).

We call that sprinkling. If it's a male cat that's not fixed, that's when they actually spray.

The biscuits/kneading usually come first, then the sprinkling starts when the back legs start coming up and the tail starts vibrating.

If it's something he likes, like the fridge, no biscuits get made, it's straight to sprinkling for a few seconds to just make sure it's still his.

Oh and the wiping of gums on literally everything, most importantly every cardboard box in the house.

It's definitely an arousal thing mixed in with territory marking.

They could also be referring to that wiggling they do before they pounce. Some cats do it quite fast. This is the first I thought of when I read that comment.

Thanks for the summary! It helped me scan through HN faster and get back to work ;) We all should try to do this more often.

What is a "small squishy"? Do I even want to know...?

Stuffed animal toy

Oh... lol. Thought the sentence was referring to a body part.

This cat thread got weirdly sexual especially with all the biscuit making

as humans are bilaterally symmetric to some tolerance, and there is a body part pair that is universally somewhat mismatched, but we repeatedly reassure and are reassured it's totally normal, I felt certain small squishy...

My dog loves licking me. Arms, hands/finger (especially when I've just washed them and they aren't dry yet), scalp.

He also will scratch the fake tile floor in certain corner spaces like next to my front door. I think I read a while back that the scratching helps release their scent so it's like they're reclaiming their territory too. (this is after he's gone out and done his business, not him telling me he needs to go out)

Plus #1 has a human analogue: Human's are known to thumb suck for comfort. Some continuing the behaviour into adulthood - perhaps even 1 in 10, but I don't really believe that.(1)

(1) https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/an-adults-habit-that-really-su...

I had a cousin who continued to suck her thumb when anxious into pre-puberty

For #2 this is not the reason. They don't deposit much scent through the paws, but mainly through the cheeks. This is why cats headbutt you.

I've known a female cat that would knead on your belly and nurse from your finger while doing so. #1 is definitely it.

The knead because those biscuits aren't going to make themselves!

It's interesting that the motion is called that, because any biscuits I've ever made get tough and not flaky if you knead them too much. And too much is pretty much anything more than the bare minimum required to get them to hold together.

Biscuits (in the US sense) are more like a chemically leavened pie crust than a yeast leavened bread.

If it's not obvious, I'm not a serious baker.

I like the term “making biscuits” better than “kneading” or “kneading biscuits”. Butter biscuits (and scones) usually require handwork to integrate the butter into the dry ingredients. In my experience, this handwork pretty closely resembles what the cats are doing. There’s a lot of squeezing going on to break up the cold butter and mix it in.

I think of it more as a pinching motion to divide the big clumps of fat into smaller ones while coating them in flour. I'm still not convinced that cats know how to make biscuits :-)

There was a old type of biscuit in Maryland that was not leavened with chemicals but aerated by beating. Kneading would make them too tough of course. I don't understand the technique exactly and someday I'd like to try making a batch, although it would be better to find a place I can try a real one first if that still exists.

https://atasteofhistorywithjoycewhite.blogspot.com/2015/03/m...

https://libapps.salisbury.edu/nabb-online/exhibits/show/baki...

It was only a few years ago that I discovered that "biscuits" in the US sense are scones.

So that made "biscuits and gravy" sound a lot more appealing.

Any scone I've ever eaten (around the world) was sweetened to some degree. American southern style biscuits are unsweetened and have a higher fat content than a scone. It's really hard to find decent ones outside of their natural range, even throughout a lot of the USA. I would never order them in say, Seattle.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/11/better-bi...

Next topic, cheesy shrimp and grits? Or is is higher class to call it Polenta Svelta con Gamberetti?

https://www.antonio-carluccio.com/polenta_svelta_con_gambere...

As a counterpoint there's this article about the technique, not the flour, being the critical ingredient. I remember both because I dated someone from the south who missed the biscuits and I was trying to make better ones. The link you have made me think I needed to work on the flour. Then this made me think improving the technique was more important, but by that point I had gotten better at it. Now I'd have to restart the practice to make something I'm proud of. Most of the biscuits I make now get frozen and then shared for breakfast while camping or even backpacking.

None of that is to say I'm an expert, seeing that article just reminded me of a lot of biscuit making.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/01/19/686579106/is...

Sweet scones? I mean yeah, I guess you could, but why?

Biscuits in the American sense are scones in the Commonwealth sense.

Scones in the US sense are sweet. Scones in the rest of the world are savory, more like American biscuits.

Biscuits in the Commonwealth sense are American cookies, although I feel like American cookies are usually the thick kind with chocolate chips, whereas Commonwealth biscuits are often the plain thin ones that you might dunk in a cup of tea.

Speaking of tea - dinner?

In Italian I've seen a bunch of names for the kneading: pigiare la lana (to tread the wool), fare il pane (to make [knead] bread), and la danza del latte (the milk dance). I think that the first two are references to the movement, just like "making biscuits"; except that bread actually improves as you knead it, unlike biscuits.

As in Portuguese it's just "amassar pãozinho", or roughly "to knead bread", with a [likely affectionate] diminutive.

Is this the first wave of reddit exodus?

Been here longer than you, my friend.

You make the mistake of taking my comment at face value instead of interpreting it as an indictment of your behavior.

le reddit army has arrived!

Someone had to say it.

I thought it was fully understood that cats begin doing it as kittens in order to stimulate lactation from the mother, and for some cats the habit remains and manifests for their keeper when they feel safe and at ease because some cats form social/emotional relationships with their keepers (surrogates) similar to that of a kitten and its mother.

I've also understood that the behavior is most pronounced in cats that were removed from their litter and mother too soon.

Every cat I have formed a close bond with likes to do it so I don't believe that much repeated factoid.

When I was young, my family rescued two balls of fur from a couple of crows that were playing with their supper, and both of them were kneading our elbows when picked up all throughout their lives. It seemed obvious why they did that as we were feeding them from a bottle until they were old enough to eat solid food.

My wife fosters kittens. Often, she'll have a litter of kittens and the mom cat. The kittens often knead, but the mom often will too.

Thanks to evolution, mom cats are hormonally rewarded for taking care of their kittens. When the kittens are nursing on mom, she often looks totally blissed out like a raver in an ecstasy puddle, eyes half-lidded, staring off into space, paws kneading away at nothing.

I assume that kittens evolved to knead because it stimulates milking and then cats just make that association with the act and feeling good, so they retain it later in life.

Only tangentially related: when I was a kid we let a couple stray female dogs sleep in our garage during the winter. One of them was pregnant and ended up delivering like 11 puppies in our garage. Both the mother and the other stray dog began lactating and both dogs would breast-feed the puppies.

We gave away all the puppies around the neighborhood. We took one, so did our aunt and a family friend. It was an interesting experience to get to see how different dogs from the same litter and different environments grew up. When they would get together you could tell they remembered/knew each other. I still miss that dog - literally experienced his entire life :(

... are nursing on mom, she often looks totally blissed out like a raver in an ecstasy puddle ...

I KNEW IT! Females are nothing but addicts, looking to get their next fix of baby giggles, cuddles, kneading, ... and babies are nothing but the other part in this codependence travesty!

Oh wait...

...that's literally everyone (/ everything).

Paging Dr. Maslow...

Or all mammals

Our cat does this on soft blankets, but unlike the other cats mentioned in the comments, she doesn't look like she's enjoying it. Her ears are back and her brow is furrowed and she looks like she is unsure why she's doing it. Alternatively, she looks like she's hatching an evil plot to take over the world.

Option B. Always option B.

More seriously, I get the impression Being A Cat is rather intense and takes up their entire concentration.

That's what I've always said about kittens; why they run around and get excited - they're under a lot of pressure to be a cat and what's a higher standard then that? Once they're fully a cat they take it easy a lot though because y'know cat.

I always assumed it was something akin to humans cracking our knuckles. Just a pleasurable stretching sensation for their claws or something. I have zero evidence to back this up, but it seems to me like if I had retractable claws I'd want to "stretch" them regularly.

I never thought this was uncertain. It's pretty clear it's simple regression to infant behaviour.

Which is not so strange if you consider that more behaviour cats exhibit around humans (like meowing!) is also regression.

When our cat lays down on her side and is in the mood for belly rub, she does this kneading motion in the air while purring loudly and rubbing her head into all nearby objects, so for simplicity we just assume she's happy :)

But on the other hand, sometimes a cat is going somewhere and unintentionally steps onto a blanket or something soft, then just starts kneading like it walked into a quicksand and it's face is like "goddamn here we go again"

I've never heard it called kneading, locally we call it milk-treading. I've always assumed it had something to do, therefore, with kitten behavior while nursing from their mother.

Never heard that one.

Also common to say they're "making biscuits".

When our cat comes to sleep w/ us we ask him to make some biscuits, he usually does.

If you're lucky and the biscuits line up he'll give you a nice massage.

A few years ago, Friskies did a comedercial (it's a word I just made up) series narrated by Zefrank of "True Facts" and the "Sad Dog Diary" fame called "Dear Kitten". They are quite amusing... at least I find them amusing.

The relevant one is Dear Kitten: The Art Of Massage - https://youtu.be/ksZ5SyyfHJ0

> Dear kitten I need to give you a little history lesson. Hundreds of thousands of years ago we cats were given a choice. Either we could learn the art of swimming and become a seafaring creature or we could choose the gift of the art of massage. I think it's obvious which one we chose. Massage. To this day we must exercise our duty to massage everything. We alone can exercise this alternating gentle touch with a little aftertaste of claws digging in the flesh.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milchtritt

Kneading is the common name given to it because it looks almost like they're kneading bread. You'd have to know it's related to milk to call it milk-treading!

I get that it's a regional thing. I don't think you need to know the underlying explanation just to memorize the term. Otherwise nobody would say things like 'mute point', or 'for all intensive purposes', or 'could care less', etc. Most people usually use the phrases in the right context, but clearly don't understand what they are actually saying or they wouldn't say it.

'Could care less' is imo the preferred formulation, the implication being that while there is no fundamental physical law preventing me from caring less, from a practical standpoint it seems highly unlikely. It's like how I could be a high lottery pick in the 2023 NBA draft - I'm unathletic and old and get humiliated by 7th graders in games of 1-on-1 - but technically it only takes one NBA GM seeing something special in me and I'm shaking hands with the Commissioner.

It's all in the delivery.

Drilling. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rryNobB_rvw

I have a large soft sleeping pillow (about 4-feet long x 2 feet wide x 6 inches thick) that is white with grey spots. One of the neighboring feral cats occasionally comes to the door and waits until I invite him in. If he finds the pillow he lies atop it, kneading it and purring like crazy.

#1 makes a lot of sense, but I guess we’ll never know :) It looks cute and I could watch it for hours!

Our dog (several years old at this point) sometimes puts her mouth around the edge of her bed and kneads it with her paw. Clearly a nursing behavior. We got her as a rescue so with her unknown history, it may be leftover behavior from an early separation from her mother.

I always imagined it was a reflex to check for things like snakes or other pests before lying down which also doubled as a social cue (as outlined in the article). You see cats kneading blankets seemingly checking for something until they feel secure enough to sleep.

Does it really take 15mins at a time to feel secure, or is my cat just reeeaallly insecure about his blanket?

Are we maybe overthinking this? I always thought it was most likely just an instinct to make themselves a comfortable bed. The same way a human would clear rocks, sticks, or otherwise steer clear of uncomfortable things on the ground.

I don't think that's the case. My cats knead my head, my chest, my abdomen and my legs, but it doesn't rest on me.

I always thought it was because they were checking out the safety of the thing they wanted to curl up and sleep on. They wanted to first make sure it wouldn't give out underneath them.

I'd always assumed my cat drools when she gets a good knead on simply because she's purring so hard, but it makes sense that it's related to nursing behavior.

Good sound track for reading the article and comments -> https://purrli.com/

Hug o' death: https://web.archive.org/web/20230605112611/https://purrli.co...

I'll hold my cat like a baby, and she'll knead in the air. Or when getting pet lying on her side. I think it's a happy state thing for her.

The infant comfort explanation always made sense to me. I know some people continue to suck their thumb into adulthood, presumably for the same reasons.

They knead before they sit down. If you lived in grass land with the gras being higher than you, you'd probably knew why.

This would seem less speculative if they also discussed why dogs do the same thing. And whether any other animals also do it.

dogs do the same thing?

My rescue pup does. He lost his mother when he was a few weeks old and was bottle-fed from that point on. Now he suckles on a blanket while kneading it as he falls asleep. Just by coincidence there's a thunderstorm outside right now and he's doing it so it probably has a calming effect.

Based on my sample of one (who didn't have an atypical upbringing).

"During nursing, a kitten rhythmically treads its paws on the mother's body to stimulate the flow of milk."

But adult cats use their claws, which kittens presumably don't do, otherwise they would hurt the mother. So this explanation seems questionable.

Like human babies don't use their teeth while sucking on a tit ? Oh wait ...

My cats do this and we love it.

I have cats, and the kneading really seems to me that they’re only making sure the place they’re about to lie on is comfortable.

When cats knead, they also purr a lot and their nose gets extremely wet and cold (it even starts dripping), so it's clear it's some special physiological exercise rather than just testing the surface out with their paws.

I'm wondering if it's a form of exercise (like humans squeezing a stress ball) and/or to clean their claws.

Same reason why cats try to dig a carpet.

So basically, we don’t know?

Why do cats knead?

Well, I guess for the same reason I knead love, sex, food and rock and roll.

my puppy does it too

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