Welcome to Brainstuff from house Stuff Works dot Com, where smart happens him Marshall Brain with today's question, how does catnip work? Catnip is the common name for a perennial herb of the mint family. It's a native to Europe and is an import to the United States and other countries. The cat nep plant is now a widespread weed in most of North America. Given to the right cat, cat ip can cause an amazing reaction. The cat will ruvenant, roll over it, kick at it, sometimes foam at the mouth,
and generally go nuts for several minutes. Then the cat will lose all interest and walk away. Two hours later, the cat may come back and have exactly the same response again. Because there really isn't any scent that causes this sort of reaction in human beings, catip is hard for us to understand. However, it's not an uncommon behavior
in animals that rely heavily on their noses. For example, there are many sense that will trigger intense hunting behaviors and dogs, and other sense will cause dogs to stop in their tracks and roll all over that set. Although no one knows exactly what happens inside the cat's brain. It is known that there is one particular chemical and cat nip that is the thing that triggers this weird response. Apparently, the chemical somehow kicks off as stereotypical patterning cats that
are sensitive to the chemical. The catnip reaction is inherited, and some cats are totally unaffected by it. Large cats like tigers, can be sensitive to it as well. The reaction to cat nip only lasts for a few minutes, then the cat acclimates to it, and it can take an hour or two away from the catnip for the cat to reset, then the same reaction could occur again. Very young kittens and older cats seem less likely to have a reaction to at now. Do you have any
ideas or suggestions for this podcast? If so, please send me an email at podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, go to how stuff works dot com and be sure to check out the brain stuff blog on the how stuffworks dot com home page.