Frazz by Jef Mallett for February 22, 2019

\Improves eye-paw coordination.

What she fails to understand is that cats are also children.

I call it the Pschearer Play Principle: that mammals have an innate physiological/psychological mechanism to derive pleasure from the non-useful exercise of their capacities. It derives from the need of most mammal brains to grow substantially between birth and some degree of independence from mommy’s mammae. I have found no cases of reptiles or amphibians playing, although I suspect it exists in the smartest birds (parrots, crows, and maybe raptors). And it definitely applies to humans, even extending to higher cognitive levels. (That’s why, for instance, we “play” chess, etc.) Discuss amongst yourselves.

That’s not how you make sharp cheese (speaking of stupid)

Was she trying to avoid a cheesy subject?

perspective is all She is learning by doing,

I thought that the reason cats toy with the animals that they catch before eating them was because the adrenaline that the terror induces in the unlucky prey makes the meat taste better.

None of the above. Rodents have sharp teeth and can seriously injure a cat. Furthermore, a cat can’t actually see the point on the back of the neck they have to hit to kill their prey once they get close enough to do it. Put those things together and they need to tire their prey out so that they can move in to kill it without risk. They don’t usually play with birds, but might, since the behavior is built in.

It is interesting – the going theories for this are that a) the cat never learned to kill, b) the average domestic cat has no need to hunt for food, only entertainment or c) getting a good kill shot on prey is difficult to land when dinner is fighting back so tiring out the prey reduces the risk of injury. I had a cat who was a little assassin, there was no hesitation in the killing of prey whatsoever, no playing, she would just dispatch them as quickly as possible. She had arrived as a stray so I have a feeling she learned better hunting skills because she had to. Nice little cat otherwise though, as long as you weren’t food or another cat (very territorial).

Quick google search (because I was curious):

https://azdailysun.com/lifestyles/pets/london-zoo-why-do-cats-play-with-their-food/article_46a97775-232d-5e56-b0ea-dd1c8782b062.html

Basically it says: cats kill by biting the neck and breaking the spinal cord. When they do this, the prey could fight back and damage the cat’s nose and/or eyes. They “play” with their prey to tire the prey, and prevent the prey from damaging the cat’s face.

Cats “play” with their food because they need to tire it out before killing it. Cats’ main prey are rodents, and the teeth of most rodents can chew through quite a few things (like wood). So getting bit by one isn’t a small thing for cats.

In general, when you observe a consistent behavior in a living creature, it’s because it conveys some kind of evolutionary advantage to something (not necessarily the creature itself).

Play is generally actually a form of practice of life skills. Cats ‘play’ with their prey to hone their hunting skills.

Cats are MEAN.

Cats ‘play’ with their food to stun and disorient it so that they can kill it without risking a wound, not because they are sadistic monsters. Kids, on the other hand…

I play with my food all the time. It’s called “cooking”.

It’s called “play.” Humans do it, too. We aren’t the only mammal to play games.

PostsFrazz12 hrs ·

Do the big sets of Crayola crayons still have the little sharpener built into the box, or am I showing my age?

No matter. I’m already showing my age by drawing a comic strip for newspapers. So I’ll go on to wonder just how many school pencil sharpeners came a cropper thanks to Crayola and those intra-box sharpeners. Because, for one, they didn’t work. Not for very long. But they gave you the idea that crayons could be sharpened, and once you know that, who could blame you for searching for a better way to do it? Not to mention those of us who couldn’t really spring for the big, honking 64-crayon box, so we didn’t even get sharpeners to begin with. And again, there was the answer, plain as a manual appliance screwed to the wall.

Hey, it’s how kids learn. And maybe, just maybe, how corporations like Crayola learn.

Many animals “play” with their prey to disorient or physically exhaust it, reducing the likelihood of the prey defending itself with painful or even lethal consequences for the hunter.

It has also been suggested that a habit of playing keeps kittens from killing their sibs before Momma cat has time to bat them apart.

I guess she wanted some “sharp” cheddar. :P