Cats use eyes,not smell, to search for food

Cats may prefer to use their eyes rather than follow their nose when it comes to finding the location of food. Up until now we really thought that the sense of smell would dominate how cats view their world, but we are now reconsidering this and also the implications of how we manage them. So it seems that when they had the choice, cats simply preferred the visual signals over the olfactory ones. Another important finding from this work is the individual variability - different cats had quite fixed preferences, and this may have important implications for their welfare.