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Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff from house Stuff Works dot Com, where

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Speaker 1: smart happens him Marshall Brain with today's question, how does

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Speaker 1: catnip work? Catnip is the common name for a perennial

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Speaker 1: herb of the mint family. It's a native to Europe

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Speaker 1: and is an import to the United States and other countries.

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Speaker 1: The cat nep plant is now a widespread weed in

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Speaker 1: most of North America. Given to the right cat, cat

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Speaker 1: ip can cause an amazing reaction. The cat will ruvenant,

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Speaker 1: roll over it, kick at it, sometimes foam at the mouth,

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Speaker 1: and generally go nuts for several minutes. Then the cat

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Speaker 1: will lose all interest and walk away. Two hours later,

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Speaker 1: the cat may come back and have exactly the same

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Speaker 1: response again. Because there really isn't any scent that causes

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Speaker 1: this sort of reaction in human beings, catip is hard

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Speaker 1: for us to understand. However, it's not an uncommon behavior

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Speaker 1: in animals that rely heavily on their noses. For example,

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Speaker 1: there are many sense that will trigger intense hunting behaviors

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Speaker 1: and dogs, and other sense will cause dogs to stop

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Speaker 1: in their tracks and roll all over that set. Although

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Speaker 1: no one knows exactly what happens inside the cat's brain.

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Speaker 1: It is known that there is one particular chemical and

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Speaker 1: cat nip that is the thing that triggers this weird response. Apparently,

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Speaker 1: the chemical somehow kicks off as stereotypical patterning cats that

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Speaker 1: are sensitive to the chemical. The catnip reaction is inherited,

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Speaker 1: and some cats are totally unaffected by it. Large cats

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Speaker 1: like tigers, can be sensitive to it as well. The

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Speaker 1: reaction to cat nip only lasts for a few minutes,

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Speaker 1: then the cat acclimates to it, and it can take

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Speaker 1: an hour or two away from the catnip for the

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Speaker 1: cat to reset, then the same reaction could occur again.

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Speaker 1: Very young kittens and older cats seem less likely to

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Speaker 1: have a reaction to at now. Do you have any

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Speaker 1: ideas or suggestions for this podcast? If so, please send

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Speaker 1: me an email at podcast at how stuff works dot com.

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Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, go

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Speaker 1: to how stuff works dot com and be sure to

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Speaker 1: check out the brain stuff blog on the how stuffworks

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Speaker 1: dot com home page.