A very cute behavior often observed in felines, allogrooming is found both in our small house cats and in large wild felines such as the Bengal tiger or African wild cats.
But what exactly is behind this term?
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What is allogrooming?
The word
allogrooming
comes from the contraction of the Greek word
allo
, meaning "other", and the English
grooming
, meaning "grooming".
It can therefore be translated as “grooming of the other”.
This somewhat strange name therefore refers to the phenomenon of mutual grooming that certain cats perform among themselves, but also, by extension, to the grooming that they can do to other animals or to ourselves, their masters.
Far from being abnormal or marking a pathology, it is in fact completely natural and tends to demonstrate the attachment that the cat has developed towards the one it licks.
Allogrooming often takes the form of licking-based grooming, but it can also exist in the form of light nibbling or scratching, usually of the head and neck areas of the body. sometimes difficult to reach by the cats themselves and more difficult to clean.
Why do cats groom?
At birth, and until weaning, kittens are groomed by their mother.
This action, beyond its cleaning function, provides them with calming, a reduction in stress and allows the diffusion of marking odors.
By doing this, the mother helps her kittens integrate into the siblings and more broadly into the group to which they belong.
Allogrooming is therefore a mode of tactile communication used by cats to socialize.
As they grow up, kittens who have been properly weaned will naturally reproduce this behavior with their peers.
By grooming each other, they show each other their affection and this allows them to develop a strong bond of trust between them.
This is why we often find allogrooming in cats from the same litter rather than in cats from different backgrounds.
What is the use of toileting for cats?
The sole purpose of grooming a cat is to make it clean.
Of course, it allows him to maintain his coat and get rid of any parasites.
But above all it has a soothing effect on our little balls of fur who, through this action, rediscover the sweet childhood memories of their mother grooming them.
The action of licking releases endorphins (the famous happy hormones) in both the licking cat and the cat being groomed.
By doing this, cats relax as much as they clean themselves.
In addition, the deposit of saliva left by the cat on its coat allows it to send messages about its state of health and its social position to all its peers who come to sniff it.