Right-Pawed or Left-Pawed?

Overview

Objectives/Goals My objective for my project was to find out if more cats are right-pawed, left-pawed, or ambidextrous. Methods/Materials Materials: 5 cats, Narrow cats, cat food, pencil, paper, and camera. Procedure: 1. At a cat's feeding time, give a cat his or her food in a narrow cup. Make sure the cup is too narrow for the cat's head. 2. See which paw the cat uses to scoop the foor out. Also note which paw is used next. Test each cat six times. 3. Record the observations. Results Cats don't seem to know which paw they use as a habit; the cat will use a certain paw first, but get more food with the other. Some cats use their paw to move the cup closer. If the cat finds out that "this" paw gets more food, or feels more comfortalble, that is usually the habit paw. I can tell which paw the cats get more food with. If they clean one paw more than the other, that is the one the cat used nost. If the cat used a paw around 5-10 times in a row, that meant that the cat was getting more food with that paw, so it keeps trying with that same paw. Conclusions/Discussion I have found that out of five cats, there was a tie for right and left-pawed cats (40%), and the rest (20%) were ambidextrous. Two cats were right pawed, two were left-pawed, and one was ambidextrous. My hypothesis, that most cats would be right-pawed, was incorrect.

Competition history

• CSEF 2005 Zoology · Entry J1921

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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