Researchers have found that cats spend longer sniffing a stranger’s odor than their owner’s odor, suggesting they can distinguish between familiar and unfamiliar humans from scent alone.
Cats Can Smell the Difference Between You and a Stranger, Study Finds
If you’ve ever felt like your cat knows you better than they let on — you might be right. A new study suggests that domestic cats (Felis catus) can recognize their humans by smell alone, distinguishing familiar people from strangers with just a few sniffs.
Published on May 28 in the journal PLOS One, the research offers the first solid evidence that cats are capable of identifying individual humans using scent. While cats rely heavily on smell to hunt, communicate, and explore their world, this is the first time scientists have tested whether they can differentiate between human individuals through scent.
The study’s experiment was simple: researchers presented cats with three scent samples — one from their human guardian, one from a stranger, and one unscented control. Each scent was collected using swabs taken from under the arms, behind the ears, and between the toes of human participants.
The results? Cats spent significantly more time sniffing the stranger’s scent than their owner’s, suggesting that they quickly recognize familiar smells and are more curious about unfamiliar ones.
“A shorter sniffing time suggests that when cats came across the smell of their guardian, they recognised it quickly and moved along,” wrote feline behavior researcher Julia Henning of the University of Adelaide in The Conversation. “But when they came to the swabs from an unknown person, the cat sniffed longer, using their superior sense of smell to gather information.”
Not Just a Nose — A Brain at Work
Intriguingly, the study also found that cats tended to sniff the unfamiliar scent with their right nostril first, before switching to the left. This detail hints at “brain lateralization” — the idea that different sides of the brain handle different tasks — a phenomenon seen in other animals like dogs and fish.
The study builds on previous research showing that cats can recognize their owner’s voice and even detect emotional changes in their humans through subtle cues, including shifts in body odor. But until now, researchers weren’t sure just how much cats relied on smell when it came to recognizing people.
Do Cats Know Who We Are — Or Just That We’re Familiar?
While this research confirms that cats can tell the difference between familiar and unfamiliar humans by scent, it doesn’t yet prove that they can distinguish between multiple familiar people — like choosing one known human’s scent over another’s.
“Behavioral experiments in which cats are presented with multiple known-person odor stimuli would be needed,” said co-author Hidehiko Uchiyama of Tokyo University of Agriculture, speaking to the BBC. “We would need to find specific behavioral patterns in cats that appear only in response to the owner’s odor.”
In other words, there’s still more to learn about what’s going on inside your cat’s head — but for now, it’s safe to say that your cat definitely knows your scent, and likely recognizes you in ways you never realized.