SCIENCE / MEDICINE : Cats’ Earwax Craving Queried

A scientist wants to know why his cats seem to want the whole ball of wax. Earwax, that is. In a letter published in the British scientific journal Nature, Thomas Arny, a physicist at the University of Massachusetts, seeks the help of the research community in determining why his two Siamese cats “greatly enjoyed the taste of human earwax.”

The cats’ craving for earwax is so great, Arny said, that one “leaps on the bed in the morning hoping to be offered some.”

When the Massachusetts scientist mentioned his pets’ odd behavior to three other people, he said they told him their cats also had a fondness for wax. “I’d always thought that earwax tasted very bitter (as a deterrent to insects getting into your ears), so I find the cats’ reaction hard to understand,” Arny wrote.

“Does any of your readers have any explanation? I wonder if it might be a means to induce cats to groom their kittens,” he asked.