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Mini: Catnip · Why We Do What We Do

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  You're listening to Why we do what we do? Welcome to Why we do
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  what we do? Mini. I'm your host Abraham and I'm your host Shane.
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  We are going to do a quick dive on a small topic that's just
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  a little bit of fun, and today we're talking about how catnip works.
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  You know, I think about like cartoons I watched when I was a kid,
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  and they were always reference catnip, and it was just basically like they
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  made it seem like it was just the cat was like superstone the whole time
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  when they were on it. They made it seem cartoony, if you will.
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  Yeah, it was. Yeah, it was very ridiculous, you know,
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  like which cartoons are supposed to be serious. I like to give little
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  catnip toys to my cats and I like to watch them roll around all bizarrely
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  and have fun with it, and so it's kind of a thing. They
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  look at it, bat it, rub on it, otherwise display a wide
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  range of these high energy behaviors toward it. Have you ever had cats that
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  you've given that catnip too? I've never owned cats. Oh, I never
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  had cats. And that was a particular, a very specific rule in my
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  house growing up. Oh, my dad hated cats and then my brother was
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  like super allergic to cats. So like, there's no way we could have
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  ever had one. I say my cousin did. Though my cousin had several
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  of them. I remember there was fat head and there was thin head,
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  and they had several other ones. But I don't know that they ever gave
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  them catnips. So I never saw. I've never seen that in real life.
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  Really. All Right, Well, anyway, they do this thing.
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  If they get catnip, they, as I said, well look at it,
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  bad at it, rub on it, do all these sort of high
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  energy things. Sometimes they'll jump around it and meow at it. And so
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  the question here is what's going on? Why does this plant make them do
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  that? What is happening to their brain? And an important question is is
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  it safe? Yeah, I think it's a fair question. So I think,
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  you know, like all of our episodes, we should probably have some
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  definitions. And so let's go ahead and define what catnip is. So catnip
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  is Nipita catterrhea or other nipita species. So this catnip is actually a type
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  of mint plant. There are about two hundred and fifty different varieties of mint
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  that it might be, and it's native to Europe and Asia and parts of
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  Africa and was imported around the world. So Catnap's mint. Yeah, it's
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  kind of a fact already that I did not know and was kind of surprised
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  by going into this. It's wild. If you see it, it often
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  appears as sort of a dark, leafy green, not when you probably want
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  to put in your salad. Rely you could. Actually, it is often
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  dry and looks essentially like a reguno. If you see it looks pretty much
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  identical to that, and often it is stuffed into toys or snacks, compressed
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  into a ball that's used as its own toy, or it's sold as an
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  herb or powder that can be added to things. I feel like the version
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  I've seen has been like, it looks like a reguno, it looks like
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  seasoning. Yeah, that's mostly what I've seen, and so I don't know
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  if that's the most common version of it, but that's that is one I
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  know. I'm like, that's I'm familiar with that. I'm actually not sure
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  what the most common form is, but it certainly can come that way,
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  and I have seen it that way for sure. Now, interestingly, kittens
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  up to three to six months old are actually insensitive catnip and will have no
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  reaction to it. And even then, only about thirty to fifty percent of
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  cats will ever be sensitive to catnip, or at least will have little to
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  no reaction, which I think is actually super fascinating given that there's an entire
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  industry around this. Right, the sensitivity to catnip seems to be largely genetic
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  and inherited from parent traits, or at least that's what most scientists think right
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  now. But a cat who is sensitive will, as described before, rub
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  on the catnip. They'll roll on the catnip. They might flop their body
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  onto the catnip. They might chew it or lick it. Then they might
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  even have this sort of spaced out look in their face, and they might
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  even purr or growl or display some very mild forms of aggression if they're approached
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  while they're interacting with catnip. For some cat it's like marijuana, and then
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  other cats it's like bat salts. Sure, I mean, that's obviously a
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  gross exaggeration, but the effects of catnip last about ten minutes on average,
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  and although the cat may not return to totally normal behavior for about thirty minutes
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  to a couple of hours. You can see that kind of happen every now
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  and again. During that time. They also won't be interested or be reacted
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  to catnip, So like while they're starting to recover and kind of do that,
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  they're not going to react to it in a certain way. And after
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  about two hours they will respond to it again if it is presented. So
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  once they get kind of like exposed to it and they're sensitive to it and
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  they start reacting to it, they got to recover again before they can do
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  it again. And almost like filling up your manabar exactly. Yeah, so
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  you have like this short window of time where will be super effective. After
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  that they will not really be interested in it for a couple of hours,
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  and once that is sort of reset, then a representing it means you'll get
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  a similar effect. Again. Of course, like most things, you don't
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  want to overdo it. They will often try and eat it, and high
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  doses and frequent administration of it can make them sick. So don't make your
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  cat sick. It is important to know. I think that as far as
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  safety, it is generally considered non addictive and harmless. That's good. So
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  if left alone, catnip will eventually lose its potency. So if you have
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  old catnip, just throw it away, get rid of it. You don't
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  need it. It's kind of like how medicine works. Like at a certain
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  point in time, your medicine starts losing its like actual effectiveness. That's why
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  medicine expires, right, It expires because at a certain point in time it
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  stops being as effective, it doesn't work as well. Yeah, chemicals breakdown.
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  If you ever hear about half life, it has to do with how
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  long a chemical will last before it has broken down. Yeah. Now we've
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  talked about sort of what it is, the effect that it has, how
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  long the effect lasts. But why does catnip do this thing? Well,
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  the primarily active ingredient in catnip is this volatile essential oil called nepitlectone. Is
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  how I'm going to read that word That was good? Thank you? It
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  felt smooth. If that was really smooth, you were talking and I was
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  reading it and I was like, I don't know how to say that,
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  and you nailed it. So nepitylectone. Now, the compound binds the protein
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  receptors in the cat's nasal cavity, which stimulates the brain neurons, which activates
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  the amygdala and hypothalamus through a neuroendocrine response through the pituitary glife in, so
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  lots of brain stuff. Basically, it gets the nodes and it activates and
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  lights up all these parts of their brain and glands and hormones and stuff like
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  that too. So these regions are associated with emotional give mean the little part,
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  and behavioral and sexual hypothelamus responses, which I think is interesting that they
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  say, like, you know, emotional responses are separate than behavioral responses because
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  there are all responses, but different parts of the brain light up and you
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  see all these different responses in these different areas. Yeah, what response that
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  any animal engages in That isn't a behavior? I don't know. Yeah,
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  we have not learned that yet. Yeah. So yeah, that's basically what
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  it does. It goes into the brain. It affects those regions, as
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  you said, associated with emotional and sort of behavioral sexual actions. So the
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  response is actually similar than to their behavioral response to sex pheromones, suggesting that
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  it does affect in a way a similar process to that. Now, I'm
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  given to understand that if they were to compare, like, it's not actually
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  them seeking out sex, and so where they to pursue something that tasted good
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  versus something that had that sort of sex hormone in it, they would prefer
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  to go for something that tastes good. So it's not necessarily the sexual part
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  of it per se that's important, but it seems to just have a similar
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  effect in their brain. The sort of drive, if you will, sort
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  of pushes forward this highly sort of it's a little bit of playful, a
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  little bit a little bit aggressive, like I'm really interested in this thing right
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  now. I don't know why, I don't know what it is, but
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  I want it. Yeah. So I think it's one of those things that
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  like when people think about like how brains work, I think it's very easy
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  to assume that, like you flip one switch and it's like, oh,
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  there's my food switch, there's my sex switch, and like what you find
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  is like a lot of the chemicals and the reward centers and all those things
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  are very similar, and they overlap in a lot of different ways. So
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  there's not like a singular switch. It's like kind of like this area is
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  there and it just so happens in like something work. Yeah, some other
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  variables and some other kind of like LinkedIn situations are lit up a little bit
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  more than others. So you know what that reminds me of is we did
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  our ASMR episode and we talked about the fact that ASMR is not inherently a
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  sexual thing, and that people will get the sort of stimulation from the sounds
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  and stuff and that just sort of gives them the sort of the tingly spine
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  sort of effect, if you will. And although some people do incorporate this
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  into sort of sexual activities, it by itself is not necessarily a sexual activity.
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  And I think there's a similar analogy here to how the cat seem to
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  interact with catnip. That's what I was getting at. Oh sweet great catnip
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  is cat ASMR. I love it. I love it. It's like ASMR
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  for your nose, your cat nose. There you go, now some other
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  things. I thought this is super interesting when you told me before we were
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  talking about this episode, and I thought this was really cool. This works
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  with any type of cat, So like picturing a lion or a tiger or
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  a leopard or a puma or a Lynx or a bobcat or I think I
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  can't think of any other cats. Thunder cat thunder. Yeah, so it'd
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  work with liono. So like, yes, maybe that's the thing. Is
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  like all the villains and the ThunderCats could have just used this and they would
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  have been fine. There you go. As I mentioned earlier, you actually
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  can eat this. Catnip is safe for humans. It's been consumed in tea
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  for its calming effect, sort of similar to cammameal. Our brains are different
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  from cat brains, though citation needed, so our reactions are different. Some
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  herbalists will recommend catnip as a treatment for a variety of things, of which
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  I'm not sure many have been empirically validated. But you know, the stuff
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  that is empirically validated is usually just medicine. But anyway, it has been
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  validated for or has been recommended for those things by herbalists. There's a whole
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  list of them. Obviously it's always a panacea, but mostly it includes inflammation.
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  Is they're like, they recommend taking this mint herb thing for treating inflammation.
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  Yeah. Interesting. It also works as a repellent for mosquitoes and other
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  insects. So essentially, catnip is just citranella candle. I mean kind of,
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  although that's really bad for cats, I'm given to understand. So okay,
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  So yeah, Sincera del Candle's bad. Catnip is fine. Yeah,
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  eat your catnip salad and you will not be bugged. Buy mosquito bugs,
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  mosquito bugs. All right? I think that does all? I have anything
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  else before we tap out on this one. No, I think that's I
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  think it's super fascinating. I never understood how catnip worked or like what it
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  does, so like it's like super fascinating kind of dive into it and thinking
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  of like, like, I guess if you want to stay safe in the
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  safari or the jungle, should probably carry like a big handful of like catnip,
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  like Dale from King the Hill does with his pocket dirt. Isn't that
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  like going into a forest full of grizzly bears with like a pocket full of
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  bacon. Oh yeah, I guess it's probably a bad idea. Don't do
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  that. Don't trust me. Don't trust me on outdoor survival stuff. I'm
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  not bear or grills. You don't you don't want the like sexual intrigue of
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  a panther while you're walking through the Yeah, you want to avoid these big
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  cats. You don't want to make them horning too. I track them like
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  them. Them growling and batting at you and laying on you is gonna hurt.
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  Yeah, it's gonna give you some stitches. Okay, this has been
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  Shane's bad advice. Thank you for listening to our catnip Mini. I think
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  that's all I got. So this is Abraham, this is Shane. We're
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  out. It's you've been listening to Why we Do what we Do. You
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  can learn more about this and other episodes by going to WWD WWD podcast dot
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  com. Thanks for listening, and we hope you have an awesome day