Of the many bewildering behaviors cats display, one of the strangest is their obsession with a specific species of plant.
After just one whiff, even the most stoic cat can start pawing, drooling, biting, and wriggling in a state of pure feline euphoria.
So why do cats go crazy for catnip?
This is the question cat behavior expert Musao Miyazaki and chemist Toshio Nishikawa set out to answer in 2013.
Along with their research teams from Iwate and Nagoya University, they began by studying silver vine, a plant that sparks a similar response to catnip.
First, the researchers painstakingly extracted chemical compounds from the plant and dribbled various combinations of them onto filter papers.
Then they brought in some cats and studied which compounds they were drawn to.
Overwhelmingly, their feline testers pounced on the papers containing nepetalactol.
And when Miyazaki and his student, Reiko Uneoyama, ran blood tests on the cats who'd interacted with nepetalactol, they found their systems were flooded with endorphins.
These hormones block pain signals, relieve stress, and generally create a happy, calming effect.
