The Effect of Baby Schema in Cats on Length of Stay in an Irish Animal Shelter
Open accessAbstract
Several factors may influence cats’ length of stay (LoS) within the shelter environment. The aim of this study was to investigate the potential influence that baby schema (characteristic facial features of infants, related to perceived ‘cuteness’) has on cats’ length of stay (LoS) in an animal shelter. Other factors such as paired-homing requirements, adoption profile (adverts to encourage the adoption of a specific animal) wording, coat colour, sex and age were also explored. Objective ‘cuteness’ scores were created by measuring specific facial features of 165 shelter cats. Several proportions of the cats’ faces were explored to identify the best objective measure of cuteness, including elements which have been found to associate with cuteness in cats and humans and new exploratory eye measurements. Subjective cuteness scores were developed by participants rating the ‘cuteness’ of the cat from ‘1-Not very cute’ to ‘5-Extremely cute’ through two online surveys; survey 1 investigated the cats’ social nature as well as cuteness while the second only looked at cuteness. The subjective cuteness scores were used to validate the objective cuteness scores. The analysis found that subjective cuteness in survey 1 was the only variable of influence on LoS. A novel objective cuteness measurement was developed which reflects the eye shape associated with subjective cuteness scores. The current study found that cuteness may not be as influential on cats’ LoS in shelters as hypothesised. This research looks to understand factors which influence LoS to help identify potential methods to reduce time spent in shelters and improve the welfare of cats within these environments.
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The degree of the baby schema of individual cats did not significantly influence the length of stay in the shelter.
“the degree of the baby schema of individual cats did not significantly influence the length of stay in the shelter [49].”
From Are dark-eyed dogs favoured by humans? Domestication as a potential driver of iris colour difference between dogs and wolves (2023) · cites this paper as [49]
The Results (§3.3, page not provided) report that subjective cuteness significantly predicted length of stay in the first survey (p = 0.013), while the second survey’s model was not significant (p = 0.394). The Discussion (§4.2) rejects the hypothesis that cuter cats had shorter stays, but the citing sentence overlooks the significant first-survey result. (LLM, conf=0.88)
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- Authors
- Jack, S., & Carroll, G. A.
- Affiliations
- Queen's University Belfast (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Jack, Sam
- Venue
- Animals
- Publisher
- MDPI AG
- Published
- 2022-06-04
- Volume
- 12
- Issue
- 11
- Pages
- 1461
- ISSN
- 2076-2615 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC9179851
- OpenAlex
- W4281991579
- Cited by
- 7
- References
- 49
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 1
- FWCI
- 1.38
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Animals (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Research Portal (Queen's University Belfast) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Northern Ireland Department for the Economy (DfE)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Veterinary › Small Animals › Animal Behavior and Welfare Studies
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Human-Animal Interaction Studies
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Animal and Plant Science Education
- Keywords
- baby schema, cuteness, shelter cats, length of hospital stay, animal shelters, facial features, eye shape, cat adoption, coat color, cat welfare
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