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5h ago

Scientists Identify 13 Fatty Acids That Serve as Cats’ Urine ID Tags

Behavior experiments show cats detect these semi‑volatile branched‑chain fatty acids in urine, suggesting kidney lipid droplets may store stable identity cues.

Ginger fluffy cat showing the flehmen response after picking up a curious scent.
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Animals often rely on scent marks to communicate identity across time, yet how chemically dynamic signals remain individually informative is unresolved; Ichizawa et al. show that domestic cats achieve durable chemical individuality through a reservoir-buffered system based on branched-chain fatty acid. Image credit: Ichizawa et al., doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2026.07.045.

Overview

  • The peer‑reviewed study published on Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2026, reports 13 previously undocumented branched‑chain fatty acids (BFAs) whose combinations and relative amounts differ between individual domestic cats.
  • Controlled behavior tests used sniffing time and the flehmen response to show cats distinguish urine from different donors and respond to changes in the BFA‑containing fraction alone.
  • The BFAs are semi‑volatile and persist longer than many urinary odorants, with donor‑specific profiles remaining detectable in deposited samples for at least 24 hours at room temperature.
  • Chemical analyses found BFAs concentrated in neutral lipids stored in lipid droplets in the renal cortex, leading the authors to propose a kidney reservoir that buffers short‑term variation though the route of BFA release into urine is not yet known.
  • Related compounds and kidney lipid droplets were found across several wild felid species, and the team says the finding could inform odor control, noninvasive monitoring of rare cats, and new lines of kidney physiology research pending field validation and mechanistic studies.