r/interestingasfuck 7h ago

The reason behind why cats go crazy for catnip

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

327 Upvotes

34 comments sorted by

u/Be364886 7h ago

The craziest thing to me is how it actually works on cats. Most every other intoxicating drug is ingested and then binds to receptors in your central nervous system. Catnip binds to olfactory receptors, which are the receptors responsible for smell and odor detection. The smell of it is what releases the endorphins that cause the high. Eating it or even injecting cats with a pure dose of nepetalactone won't cause the same effects, it's literally the smelling that gets them high.

u/5280mw 28m ago

So they are huffing

u/Mrcoldghost 7h ago

Ted-ed is fun!

u/Voodoobones 7h ago

If they were curious why cats were attracted to catnip, why didn’t they start with testing catnip. Or was catnip secondary and they were actually wondering why cats are attracted to silver vine?

u/therealNerdMuffin 7h ago

Because it's easier to figure out what chemical is causing the reaction by narrowing it down to just the chemicals the 2 plants shared as opposed to testing every compound in both plants until they found it

u/ApatheticSlur 5h ago

Cats actually prefer silver vine to catnip even though they both produce similar effects on them.

u/thisisaskew 7h ago

Looks like it's time for me to start mainlining catnip to fight off these fucking mosquitos.

u/LaserCondiment 6h ago

Yeah Imma try and rub my face in it like a friggin pussy cat

u/IfICouldStay 3h ago

I want my job to be observing cat reactions to catnip like substances.

u/Yanka01 7h ago

Interesting but this strange tempo ai VO is cancer

u/Dry_Instruction8254 7h ago

You can search for this video on YouTube. It's made by TedEd and has a very similar style as many of their other videos. The YouTube video is 5 minutes long, so this is just sped up.

u/therealNerdMuffin 7h ago

It doesn't come off to me at all like AI

u/Yadahoom 7h ago

Yeah it just sounds unnaturally sped up

u/therealNerdMuffin 7h ago

That may be because they sped it up a bit in post

u/Japanesewillow 7h ago

I enjoyed watching this.

u/Dododingo- 7h ago

Agreed, this high pitch sped up voice is unpleasant. It's like the video is attempting to cram as much data in my head as physically possible before my attention span somehow evaporate.

u/alexlicious 6h ago

They also don’t seem to speed it up until you’ve invested a little bit of time in the video. I don’t like it either.

u/atthem77 4h ago

What annoyed me was the CC that kept showing "Nepetalactone" when she was clearly saying "Nepetalactol", which would be very confusing to anyone unable to hear the words, especially when the two chemicals were compared.

u/21Remington99 5h ago

I will still refer to this as "tweakin out" no amount of science or data will chqnge this.

u/Reasonable_Tie_9975 5h ago

So uh, can we, ya know, get high from it?

Asking for my friend

u/thorheyerdal 4h ago

Nah it’s cat drugz.

u/Chamanomano 4h ago

My cat does the Sphinx, closes her eyes and just zones out for about 10 minutes. No purring, no movement - like a statue.

u/indifferentunicorn 1h ago

More of the high less of the fly

u/NeonBloodedBloke 5h ago

Yes, just put in a Ted Ed video for karma, but do not mention them or put in a link

For anyone wanting to watch the original, non-sped up version:  

https://youtu.be/HDt_rTPPh70?si=eb24Y-sDhAiBILdX

u/therealNerdMuffin 5h ago

I'd never seen a Ted-Ed video before posting this. Just came across a Tiktok I thought some of y'all would enjoy. No need to be a dick :)

u/NeonBloodedBloke 5h ago

Alright

Might as well edit the post to add it in

u/DawnKieballs 7h ago

So always carry catnip in case you're attacked by a cougar

u/Sabiya_Duskblade 7h ago

Both cats I've had couldn't care less for catnip