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Why do our pets lick us? We think we know some of the reasons: affection, we have something tasty on our skin. But there are additional reasons why they might lick us. Let’s look at them.
One of the first things a mother dog does for her puppies is to lick them: it helps stimulate their senses. Doing so means comfort for dogs, so when they lick you they might be trying to pass those feelings onto you. It’s basically social bonding.
Licking can also symbolize submission. In the wild subordinate dogs lick their alphas, so if a dog is licking you it’s showing that it submits to you as the pack leader. Yet another reason why they might lick you is to learn more about the environment.
Obviously all dogs use their nose to smell the area and learn from what they’re scenting. But they also use their tongues for the same purpose. They want to taste things not just because they want to eat them, but because they can get information from the taste as well.
With dogs, it’s easy to figure out why they might want to lick. The primary reasons are for affection and because things taste good. But what about cats?
I’ve known some licking cats. I’ve encountered ones in the past and both of my current cats are lickers. Cole licks me all of the time and Jonathan sometimes, and Chrestomanci is less of a licker overall but he does it an equal amount with both Jon and I. Once in a while Cole even grooms Jonathan’s hair, particularly when it’s wet. So what is up with that?
Just like dogs, mother cats lick their young kittens. Thus licking for cats means at least one of the same things as it does for dogs: social bonding and affection. I believe it. Cats also just have strong grooming instincts and obviously licking is a big facet of that, and so even though Jon doesn’t really show Cole affection, at times Cole can’t resist Jon’s messy wet hair.
There’s a bit more to it than that, though. Just like with dogs, the feeling of a mother’s tongue is one of the first sensations a cat experiences. They come to associate it with territory. Cats aren’t necessarily less likely to lick a wider variety of people because they’re not as affectionate as dogs – Chrestomanci purrs more loudly than any cat I’ve ever heard for anyone who so much as scratches his ears – but because to them licking isn’t just any form of affection, but one that has to do with territory.
Cats reserve their affectionate licking for things that they are claiming as theirs. That’s another element in play when they groom each other and their human family. Although on rare occasions I’ve been licked by cats at the shelter, almost all of my cat licking experiences have been with cats I’ve known well.
So there you have it: although there are some other reasons why our pets lick us, a big one is that they’re doing so out of what we can construe as affection.
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Cats and Their Glands: A Very Stinky Problem
*(The above image by Blackangel is licensed by the Creative Commons 2.5 Attribution License).