Ever noticed that your cat prefers to sleep on their left side? They're not alone. Most cats like to sleep on their left side – and after analysing hundreds of YouTube videos of sleeping cats, an international research team think they know why.
- Do cats dream? And other cat nap facts
- This is what your cat’s sleeping position tells you about how it's feeling
The researchers believe sleeping on their left side give the cats an evolutionary advantage because it favours hunting and escape behavior after waking up.
"Asymmetries in behaviour can have advantages because both hemispheres of the brain specialize in different tasks," says Onur Güntürkün, one of the study's authors.
Cats sleep around 12 to 16 hours a day, preferably in elevated places where their predators can only access them from below.
The researchers concluded that cats that sleep on their left side perceive their surroundings upon awakening with their left visual field, which is processed in the right hemisphere of the brain.
This hemisphere is specialised in spatial awareness, the processing of threats and the coordination of rapid escape movements. If a cat sleeps on its left shoulder and wakes up, visual information about predators or prey goes directly to the right hemisphere of the brain, which is best in processing them. "Sleeping on the left side can therefore be a survival strategy," they said.
The group studied 408 YouTube videos, all which clearly show a single cat with its entire body sleeping on one side for at least ten seconds. Two thirds of the videos showed cats sleeping on their left side.
The team from the University of Bari Aldo Moro (Italy), Ruhr University Bochum (Germany), Medical School Hamburg and other partners in Germany, Canada, Switzerland and Turkey report on the study in the journal Current Biology.
- Is your cat being bullied? Why cats fight – and what you can do to stop them
- Scientists solve the decades-long mystery of what makes cats orange – and why ginger cats tend to be male
- Massive moggies: These are the 6 biggest pet cat breeds in the world
Main image: Getty
