New research shows how the kitten and the silver vine trigger euphoric feelings in cats and help them avoid mosquitoes.
The kitten is known to have a special place in the hearts of cats, who often respond by rubbing their faces and heads on the floor, circling the ground and then splitting into a state of intoxicated rest.
But the biological mechanisms by which its magic works, and whether it confers any additional benefit on cats, had so far been unanswered questions.
An international team of researchers published a study in the journal Science Advances on Wednesday, which found that catnip and the silver vine, an even more powerful herb found in the mountains of Japan and China, can prevent mosquitoes. .
They also identified nepetalactol as the main compound in the silver vine responsible for inducing a euphoric state and found that it activates the brain’s opioid reward system. The substance is similar to nepetalactone, the key psychoactive compound in cats.
Masao Miyazaki, a professor at Iwate University in Japan who was the lead author of the paper, told AFP news agency that the team had applied for a patent to develop an insect repellent based on its results.
The team began testing how 25 lab cats, 30 wild cats and several large cats, including an Amur leopard, two jaguars and two Eurasian lynxes, responded to the nepetalactol-soaked filter paper.
All cats spent more time with nepetalactol-infused paper than with normal filter paper used as a control.
In contrast, laboratory dogs and mice showed no interest in the role of nepetalactol.
They then tested how 12 cats responded to all known bioactive compounds from the silver vine, confirming that nepetalactol was the most potent of the substances.
To check if feline responses to the substance were governed by the brain’s opioid system, they took blood samples to check for beta-endorphin levels five minutes before and after they were exposed to nepetalactol.
Elevated endorphin concentrations occurred only after exposure to nepetalactol and not to the control substance.
When researchers gave cats naloxone, a drug that inhibits the effects of opioids, cats no longer wanted to rub against nepetalactol. Naloxone is commonly used in humans to treat an opioid overdose.
But unlike opioids, scientists think the nepetalactol response is “non-addictive,” because it works by triggering an increase in endorphins that are already produced by the body.
Drugs such as morphine, in turn, stimulate opioid receptors in the brain directly, not indirectly.
Finally, they tested whether the silver vine leaves repelled Aedes albopictus mosquitoes when cats rubbed the plant.
They found that significantly fewer mosquitoes landed on cats that participated in this behavior.
This, they wrote, was an example of “how animals use plant metabolites to protect themselves from insect pests,” which is seen for example in some species of birds that rub citrus against themselves or in chimpanzees that make platforms for sleeping from trees with repellent qualities.