Your cat credibly knows it as Catnip or Catmint . But the stuff that drives your kitten crazy go away by the Latin nameNepeta cataria , and it ’s a member of the genusNepeta(derived from Nepete , the Italian town where catnip was first civilize ) .
When a cat smells catnip it ordinarily salt lick , chews , rubs against and rolls around on the plant , as well as salivates and meows . This response lasts for about 5 to 15 minutes , and then the bozo loses involvement and necessitate about two hour of " reset" clock time before it can have the same reply . Amazingly , catnip does n’t prevail ability over all felines . Response to catnip is genetically inherit , with about 70 to 80 percent of CT march the typical answer to the industrial plant . Of those , kittens younger than six calendar month and very old cats are less likely to reply .
But why does the plant hold such big businessman over your hombre ? The enigma to catnip is nepetalactone , a volatile oil stash away in tiny electric light on the folio , stems and seedpods of the plant . When nepetalactone inscribe a cat ’s nasal tissue paper , it binds to olfactory sensory receptor at the olfactory epithelium . Sensory nerve cell are stimulated and cause neurons in the olfactory bulb to send signal to the brainpower . Once the brain gets involved , thing get a bit murky because we still do n’t have a over neurologic explanation for cats ' behavioral chemical reaction , but the prevail theory is that nepetalactone mimics a cat pheromone .
Besides amusing our pets, is there any use for catnip?
Research from the early sixties suggested that a mouthful of nepetalactone for insect that morsel into the plant kept them off . Later experiments establish that catnip oil had the same repellent effect as 10 time the amount of DEET , sparking the emergence of several " natural" insect repellants using nepetalactone .
Catnip also has a mild calming effect on multitude , and tribe medicine dictate it as a treatment for sick headache , indigestion , insomnia , griping and toothaches .
