Does anyone know how many people watch cat videos? Perhaps that's not even important. What is important is the research question: Onur Güntürkün and his team analyzed more than 400 cat clips on YouTube. Enviable!

Analysis of YouTube videos revealed that this behaviour is common among cats and may be interpreted as a sign of functional lateralization in the brain, which may enhance responsiveness during sleep. The results provide new insights into the evolutionary background of animal behaviour and have been published in Current Biology.

Isparta, S., Ocklenburg, S., Siniscalchi, M., Goursot, C., Ryan, C. L., Doucette, T. A., Reinhardt, P. R., Gosse, R., Çıldır, Ö. Ş., D’Ingeo, N. S., Freund, N., Güntürkün, O., & Demirbas, Y. S. (2025). Lateralized sleeping positions in domestic cats. Current Biology, 35(12), R597–R598.