You may think that cats crave the plants catnip and silver vine because it gives them a euphoric feeling, and that’s true.
Still, new research indicates that cats also use the plants for another important reason: to keep mosquitoes at bay.
Silver vine, an alternative to catnip, grows in China and Japan. Researchers began by identifying the one active ingredient in both plants, called nepetalactol, that most strongly triggers ‘catnip behavior’. They confirmed the response in 35 small cats and three large non-domestic breeds: jaguar, Amur leopard and Eurasian lynx.
Knowing that nepetalactol can repel mosquitoes, they then hypothesized that cats’ response to the plants allows them to transfer the compound to their coats for protection against mosquitoes.
To determine whether this made sense, researchers placed paper filters containing nepetalactol on different parts of a cat’s cage.
When cats rubbed the nepetalactol paper, the substance transferred to their faces and heads. This indicated that the main function of rubbing behavior is to apply the chemical to these areas of cat fur, researchers said.
“We then tested the mosquito-repellent property of nepetalactol on cats. We counted the number of mosquitoes that landed on cat heads with and without application of nepetalactol. The mosquitoes landed less on the nepetalactol heads,” said study leader Masao Miyazaki, a professor at Iwate. University in Japan.
To see if mosquitoes respond the same in a more natural environment, we compared the mosquito response between cats that responded to silver vine leaves and unresponsive cats, “Miyazaki said.
“Mosquitoes avoided the responsive cats. From these results, we found that the cats’ response to silver vine is a chemical defense against mosquitoes, and perhaps against viruses and parasitic insects. This was the main finding of our study,” he said in a university graduate. press release.
Miyazaki and his colleagues see many opportunities to use the findings in research.
“Why is this response limited to cats? Why do non-feline animals not respond to the plant? To find answers, we want to identify the gene responsible for the response. The findings of this study can be used in a variety of applications, including development of new mosquito repellent products, ”said Miyazaki.
The research was published Jan. 20 in Science Advances.