City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works School of Arts & Sciences Theses Hunter College Summer 8-7-2017 Domestic Cat Ethology: Evaluating Social Media for Data Collection Patricia Casey CUNY Hunter College How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/hc_sas_etds/226 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact:
[email protected] Running Head: USING SOCIAL MEDIA FOR FELINE BEHAVIOR DATA Domestic Cat Ethology: Evaluating Social Media for Data Collection by Patricia M. Casey Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Animal Behavior and Conservation, Hunter College The City University of New York 2017 Thesis Sponsor: 7/5/2017 Stephen Zawistowski Date Signature 7/5/2017 Sheila Chase Date Signature of Second Reader USING SOCIAL MEDIA FOR FELINE BEHAVIOR DATA 2 Abstract The purpose of this study was to determine whether videos of cats submitted to YouTube could be used to increase understanding of the behavior of domestic cats living in a home environment. Behaviors revealed through coding of 61videos were examined by using an ethogram developed through use of two standardized ethograms of domestic cat behavior and a scale of cat stress levels. It was found that: a) positive tail postures, which include the most well-documented greeting behavior of cats, were 5.31 times more likely to occur in videos in the affiliation category than other categories of videos; b) paw, one of the most common cat play behaviors, occurred significantly more frequently than the other play behaviors; and c) vocalizations were 5.67 times less likely to occur in a video in the play category, confirming the finding that play tends to take place mostly in silence.