Why does a kitten sometimes throw a toy into the air when Playing?

The scene is familiar enough. A kitten tires of stalking and chasing a ball. It suddenly and without warning flips one of its paws under the ball, flinging it up into the air and backwards over its head. As the ball flies through the air, the kitten swings round and follows it, pouncing on it and 'killing' it yet again. As a slight variation, faced with a larger ball, it will perform the backward flip using both front feet at the same time. The usual interpretation of this playful behaviour is that the kitten is being inventive and cunningly intelligent. because its toy will not fly up into the air like a living bird, the kitten 'puts life into it' by flinging the ball over its shoulder, so that it can then enjoy pursuing the more excitingly 'lively' preysubstitute. This credits the kitten with a remarkable capacity for creative play – for inventing a bird in flight. In support of this idea is the fact that no adult cat hunting a real bird would use the 'flip-up' action of the front paws. This action, it is argued, is the truly inventive movement, reflecting the kitten's advanced intelligence. unfortunately this interpretation is wrong. It is based on an ignorance of the instinctive hunting actions of the cat.

In the wild state, cats have three different patterns of attack, depending on whether they are hunting mice, birds or fish. With mice, they stalk, pounce, trap with the front feet and then bite. With birds they stalk, pounce and then, if the bird flies up into the air, they leap up after it, swiping at it with both front feet at once. If they are quick enough and trap the bird's body in the pincer movement of their front legs, they pull it down to the ground for the killing-bite. less familiar is the way in which cats hunt for fish. They do this by lying in wait at the water's edge and then, when an unwary fish swims near, they dip a paw swiftly into the water and slide it rapidly under the fish's body, flipping the fish up out of the water. The direction of the flip is back and over the cat's shoulders, and it flings the fish clear of the water.

As the startled fish lands on the grass behind the cat, the hunter swings round and pounces. If the fish is too large to be flipped with the claws of just one front foot, then the cat may risk plunging both front feet into the water at once, grabbing the fish from underneath with its extended claws and then flinging the prey bodily backwards over its head. It is these instinctive fishing actions that the kittens are performing with their 'flip-up' of the toy ball, not some new action they have learned or invented. The reason why this has been overlooked in the past is because few people have watched cats fishing successfully in the wild, whereas many people have seen their pets leaping up at birds on the garden lawn. A Dutch research project was able to reveal that the scooping up of fish from the water, using the 'flip-up' action, matures surprisingly early and without the benefit of maternal instruction. Kittens allowed to hunt fish regularly from their fifth week of life onwards, but in the absence of their mother, became successful anglers by the age of seven weeks. So the playful kitten throwing a ball over its shoulder is really doing no more than it would do for real, if it were growing up in the wild, near a pond or river.