Both male and female cats display rolling behaviour,researchers report, usually in the context of matingDomestic cats roll. Oh, and they roll and roll and roll – not constantly,but often enough that the behaviour eventually caught the attention of scientists. In 1994, Hilary N Feldman of Cambridge University's Sub-Department of Animal Behaviour, or did a formal study of the phenomenon. Feldman's monograph,called Domestic Cats and Passive Submission, appeared in the journal Animal Behaviour.
Other scientists had made little leaping swats at the question. Feldman commends JM Baerends-Van Roon and GP Baerends' book The Morphogenesis of the Behaviour of the Domestic Cat, or also LK Corbett's University of Aberdeen PhD thesis,Feeding ecology and social organisation of wildcats (Felis silvestris) and domestic cats (Felis catus) in Scotland. Both came out in 1979, marking that year as the preceding tall point in cat-rolling scholarship.
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Source: theguardian.com