Can the movements of cats and athletes help scientists improve how robots land from a fall? Yes. Read more here! Plus gratuitous cute cat video (no cats were harmed).
Humans are on an endless quest for a fountain of youth – keys to longevity and health – and we’d like to know what might help our pets live longer too. Scientists in the UK recently published a study, “Longevity and mortality of cats attending primary care veterinary practices in England” in the Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery, examining factors that were correlated with increased lifespan and risk of death in domestic cats.
Cats are considered seniors by the age of 10 or so.
Photo by Edward Townend, https://www.flickr.com/photos/townendphotography/
There have been surprisingly few studies on the lifespan of pet cats. Cats are considered seniors by age 10 and cats typically stop producing offspring by the time they are 11 or 12. Sources report the average lifespan of cats to be from 10 to 14 years, but little is known about what might cause some cats to live longer lives than others.
The current study utilized veterinary records from September 2009 until December of 2012. To be included in the study, cats had to be noted as deceased in the veterinary records. Other factors that were noted were: sex of the cat (including neuter status), age at time of death, body weight, insurance status, breed and disease status were also included as variables when known. From over 12,000 records of deceased cats, around 4000 were randomly selected for the final dataset.