Cats are known for their keen senses and seeming ability to detect things that humans cannot perceive. Many cat owners have stories of their feline friends detecting illness, impending danger, or other changes before anyone else notices.
But is there any scientific proof that cats have a sixth sense for sensing when something is wrong?
If you’re short on time, here’s the quick answer: Research shows that cats may be able to sense subtle changes in human behavior and the environment that signal illness, emotional upheavals, or impending natural disasters.
Their advanced sensory capabilities and understanding of body language and pheromones likely contribute to this ability.
Cats’ Advanced Senses
Hearing
Cats have excellent hearing capabilities that are far superior to humans. Their large, movable outer ears help them locate the source of sounds with great precision. Cats can hear sounds at frequencies up to 64 kHz, compared to humans who can only hear up to 20 kHz.
This allows cats to hear high-pitched sounds made by rodents and other small animals. Cats also have an amazing ability to move their ears independently, allowing them to pinpoint the exact location of sounds – isn’t that amazing?
With such sensitive hearing, cats can often detect subtle changes in their environment or in your behavior. For example, they may hear a change in your breathing or heartbeat that signals you are stressed or unwell before you even realize it yourself.
Smell
A cat’s sense of smell is approximately 14 times stronger than humans. While we have about 5 million scent receptors, cats have closer to 200 million! This allows them to detect and interpret odors in ways we cannot imagine.
Cats use their powerful sense of smell to identify other cats, people, food, enemies, etc. They have an organ called the vomeronasal or Jacobson’s organ in the roof of their mouth that analyzes pheromones – chemical scent signals.
This helps provide cats with a tremendous amount of information from smells in their surroundings.
With such an uncanny ability to analyze scents, cats are able to detect changes in your scent that may indicate illness, stress or worry. Some studies suggest cats may even be able to sniff out diseases like cancer through odor detection.
Taste
While not as highly developed as their other senses, cats do have a reasonable sense of taste. They have around 470 taste buds compared to humans who have 9,000. Cats likely primarily experience the basic tastes – sweet, sour, bitter, salty. They do not taste flavors as intricately as humans do.
However, a cat’s sense of smell works closely with their sense of taste to provide them with detailed information about their food. Their great sense of smell allows them to thoroughly analyze the scents associated with food to determine if it is appealing or perhaps spoiled.
Cats may reject food or drink if it does not smell or taste “right” to them. This could be an early indication of health issues to pay attention to.
Touch
Cats have very sensitive tactile sensations in their whiskers and paws. Their whiskers contain many sensitive nerve endings that help cats detect and analyze objects and environments even in the dark. The slightest change in air currents around their whiskers provides useful information.
Cats also have a delicate sense of touch through their paws. There are special nerve endings located in the pads of their paws that allow cats to feel vibrations and detect even the most subtle texture changes on the ground. This helps provide cats with a detailed map of their surroundings.
With such fine-tuned sensitivity in their whiskers and paws, cats are able to pick up on subtle vibrations or changes in their surroundings that may alert them to danger or disturbances. This sensory information contributes to a cat’s perception that something is not right in their environment.
Sixth Sense
Many cat owners and animal experts believe cats have a sixth sense that allows them to detect things we cannot. There are countless anecdotal stories of cats alerting their owners to impending disasters, health issues or dangers by odd changes in behavior.
For example, some cats may hide, act agitated or clingy, meow excessively, or engage in out-of-character behaviors when sensing environmental threats like natural disasters. Some cats have detected health conditions in their owners, like seizures or low blood sugar in diabetics, by acting differently than usual.
While cats’ sixth sense remains scientifically unproven, their heightened natural senses and intuition do seem to provide cats with an awareness of subtle changes in their surroundings that humans miss. So if your cat starts acting unusual, pay attention!
They may be trying to tell you something is amiss.
Evidence That Cats Detect Illness and Other Changes
Signs of Illness
Cats have an incredible ability to detect illness and other changes in human health. Here are some of the signs that cats can pick up on:
- Excessive cuddling or clinginess – Cats often snuggle up close to unwell owners as if to comfort them. This behavior suggests they can sense physical or emotional distress.
- Meowing or crying – Some cats meow or cry more when their owner is ill. It’s as if they are trying to alert others that something is wrong.
- Refusing to leave their side – Cats frequently follow sick owners from room to room and refuse to leave their side. It’s like they want to keep a watchful eye.
- Biting or nipping – Biting or nipping at the owner’s body part that is inflamed or injured. This may indicate that the cat detects the area of discomfort.
- Bringing “gifts” – Cats often bring “gifts” like dead mice or birds to their unwell owners, perhaps trying to help them feel better with their natural hunting instincts.
Scientists speculate cats may be able to detect physiological changes like fever, inflammation, or abnormal cell growth before symptoms appear. Their powerful sense of smell allows them to pick up on chemical signals given off by a sick human body.
Signs of Emotional Changes
In addition to physical illness, cats seem capable of detecting emotional distress and mood changes in their human companions. Some signs a cat may pick up on include:
- Hiding – When owners are depressed or anxious, cats may hide under beds or furniture more.
- Excessive vocalization – Some cats meow excessively when their owner is stressed. It’s like they are saying “pay attention to me!”
- Biting or nipping – Cats may react to owner’s mood swings by biting or gently nipping as if to snap them out of their current emotional state.
- Rubbing and kneading – Increased rubbing, kneading, and bunting behaviors demonstrate a cat trying to soothe their distressed owner.
- Gazing – Cats often gaze steadily at owners going through emotional turmoil, as if trying to understand what they are feeling.
Experts believe cats may pick up on visual, auditory and olfactory cues indicating psychological distress in humans. Their response seems to be an attempt to calm and comfort their owner.
Signs of Natural Disasters
There are many accounts of cats detecting major natural disasters like earthquakes, tornadoes, and hurricanes before they strike. Some ways cats may reveal they sense an impending catastrophe include:
- Hiding – Cats often hide in small spaces prior to quakes or storms, perhaps sensing the danger.
- Agitation – Many cats appear extremely agitated, restless, and vocal before a major weather event or geological disturbance.
- Clinginess – Some cats cling closely to their owners as if seeking security from what they have sensed is coming.
- Loss of appetite – An impending natural disaster may cause a cat to lose interest in food or stop eating.
- Yowling – Reports of excessive yowling right before major quakes or tornadoes suggests cats detect something is impending.
Some experts believe cats may detect subtle environmental cues like variations in air pressure, humidity, or static electricity that indicate shifting weather patterns or seismic activity not obvious to humans. Their keen senses allow them to react to these changes.
Possible Explanations
Sensory Capabilities
Cats have extremely sensitive senses that allow them to detect subtle changes in their environment and in the people around them. Their sense of smell, for example, is 14 times stronger than humans’. They have nearly 200 million odor-sensitive cells compared to only 5 million in people.
This gives cats the ability to smell minute traces of smells which humans cannot detect.
In addition, cats can hear frequencies up to 64 kHz, significantly above the human range of 20 kHz. Their ears can also move independently to precisely locate the source of sounds. With this level of hearing sensitivity, cats may pick up on subtle sounds indicating a problem, like changes in breathing or heart rate.
Cats also have an acute sense of vision. Their eyes have a wider field of view than human eyes and allow them to detect subtle movements that people often miss. They can see clearly in light conditions up to 6 times lower than humans need.
Their advanced sight combined with their hearing allows cats to sense danger or changes faster than their owners.
Understanding Body Language
Cats are masters at reading body language – feline as well as human. When it comes to communication between cats, their posture, facial expression, tail position and movements relay a wealth of information.
For example, wide staring eyes, ears pointed backwards, whiskers pushed forward, tense muscles, puffed out fur and thrashing tail all indicate an alarmed or frightened cat. On sensing these signals in their environment, other cats in the vicinity understand something potentially threatening is occurring.
As for human body language, cats recognize our emotional states based on key visual cues. Signs like tensed shoulders, furrowed eyebrows, wringing hands and pacing all suggest inner turmoil or worry. Cats associate such signals with changes from their owner’s normal state.
Their concern and attempts to comfort may show their innate sensitivity.
Detecting Pheromones
Pheromones are airborne chemical signals that provide information between members of the same species. Though invisible to humans, they play a huge role in cat communication and health detection.
When illness strikes, physiological changes in the body trigger the release of distinctive pheromones through urine, saliva and sweat glands. Given their remarkable olfactory capabilities, cats can pick up on the altered scent profiles.
Health issues like diabetes, arthritis and even cancer produce recognizable signatures for cats.
Similarly, changes to pheromones released when humans are stressed, anxious or afraid may set off alarm bells in cats. They have specialized scent receptors allowing them to essentially “smell” human emotional states.
This may explain why some cats start behaving differently when owners are unwell or feeling out of sorts emotionally.
Training Cats to Detect Issues
Seizure Detection
Cats have an innate ability to detect subtle changes in human behavior and health conditions like seizures. Studies show that some cats can alert owners up to 30 minutes before an impending seizure (1). By leveraging this ability, cats can be professionally trained as seizure alert service animals.
Often they will paw at or nip their owner to alert them before a seizure happens so they can get to safety.
Cancer Detection
There is growing evidence that cats may be able to smell chemical changes in the human body that are early signs of cancer. Cats rely heavily on their sense of smell and have a strong sense of smell that is 14 times better than humans (2).
Some cat owners have reported their cats constantly sniffing specific parts of their body where tumors were later detected. More research is still needed, but training cats to detect cancer early could one day assist doctors.
Diabetes Detection
Like seizure disorders, cats may have the sensory capabilities needed to detect changes in the chemical balance of diabetic humans before emergency symptoms appear. There are cats who have alerted their owners of impending low blood sugar crashes through unusual vocalizations or behaviors.
Training cats to recognize the scent of chemical changes that happen leading up to diabetic emergencies could one day help save lives.
PTSD Service Cats
The comforting, calming nature of cats has led to training programs for PTSD service cats. Much like their canine counterparts, cats can be professionally trained to support those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
When distressed, the cats are taught techniques to divert attention and diffuse trauma responses. Studies show that the presence of an animal can lower anxiety, improve mood, and reduce trauma-related symptoms (3).
PTSD cats can truly be lifesavers for some people suffering from severe post-traumatic disorders.
Conclusion
While cats may sometimes seem aloof, research suggests they form strong social bonds with their humans. Their advanced sensory capabilities allow cats to detect subtle changes in human behavior and the environment that may signal impending issues.
So if your cat starts acting strange, pay attention – they may be trying to tell you something important.
