Communal nursing in the domestic cat,Felis catus

Communal nursing in the domestic cat has been observed in group living conditions. (In high density conditions, cats have social lives.) In our laboratory, when females were kept in the same cage, they delivered kittens nearly simultaneously, and started to nurse their kittens communally. This process, which was videotaped, was shown to be begun by the mother’s retrieving kittens. They seemed to have no ability to discriminate their own kittens from those of others, as our test of recognition of kittens showed. Communal nursing resulted in high mortality of kittens, the release of mothers from caring for kittens, and incomplete reproductive division of labour. Abortion was often observed in group-living cats in captivity. High mortality and low birthrate are helpful in controlling population. All members of the group were very familiar to each other, so that they formed a ‘pseudo’-kin group.