If you are a cat owner, have you ever experienced this in daily life, where your cat is naughty and troublesome, and you try hard to catch it to teach a lesson but find yourself helpless? In the end, both you and the cat collapse exhausted. Suddenly, you reach out and grab the back of the cat’s neck, and the cat suddenly stops struggling and obediently stays still.

　　After a cat is grabbed by the back of its neck, it will not move. However, are all cats like this? Let's first look at the Scottish Fold cat.

　　Mr. Yin, who owns a Scottish Fold, has kept this cat at home for a year and a half. Although it is generally well-behaved, it sometimes accidentally scratches the owner. Mr. Yin said as long as he avoids the cat’s sensitive areas, it won’t hurt anyone, but he cannot stop it from moving randomly! So, can grabbing the back of the neck make it as motionless as in the video?

　　After Mr. Yin grabbed the kitten, this Scottish Fold really behaved as if it was point-pressed on an acupuncture point, spreading its limbs and not moving at all. Could it be that the kitten recognizes its owner? Next, a reporter tried the experiment personally. During this attempt, the reporter found that when the skin behind the neck was lifted, the kitten also froze for three to four seconds but soon started moving again. Mr. Yin told the reporter that perhaps his grabbing method was a bit too harsh, and the kitten did not want to comply.

　　From the personal experience with the first kitten, we found that grabbing the skin behind a kitten’s neck does have some effect, although the duration is a bit short.

　　Let's look at another cat, a Norwegian Forest cat. It is considerably bigger than the Scottish Fold.

　　The 12-year-old cat exhibited the same situation: when the skin behind the neck was grabbed and lifted, it also spread its limbs and remained motionless.

　　Next is the third experimental cat, an adult Siamese cat. When grabbed the same way by the skin behind the neck, this Siamese cat moved as usual. So why does the same method work on some kittens but not on others?

　　Actually, cats vary individually. Generally speaking, most cats will become relatively quiet or even completely still when the skin behind their neck is grabbed.

　　Because mother cats carry their kittens by the neck directly with their mouths, the kitten thinks that its mother is carrying it. If it moves, it risks falling and getting hurt, so it doesn’t move. However, after some time, the kitten becomes unwilling because holding one posture is uncomfortable.

　　In other words, the stillness of a cat when its neck skin is grabbed is actually a genetic reflex. But because the feeling from a human hand is different from the mother cat’s mouth, the cat returns to normal after a while. As for kittens like the third experimental cat that struggle from the start, it is very likely related to their past individual experiences.

　　A group of Japanese neurobiologists studied a series of physiological responses in animals when “being picked up by their mother” and found that similar "calming effects" exist not only in mice but also in human infants. The three most typical and similar physiological responses in humans and mice during this “calming effect” are: stopping crying, submission, and heart rate slowing.

　　This research is significant because the “consistency of physiological responses between species” allows scientists to study the causes behind these phenomena using mice (instead of human infants). The research not only explains the question this article tries to answer — “a clip freezes a cat” — but also addresses a related question more relevant to humans: "Why does picking up and rocking a crying baby calm them down?"

　　In the experiment, they anesthetized the nerves that sense movement on the back of young mice’s necks. Afterwards, the “calming effect” caused by “being carried” was reduced. Also, surgically removing part of the brain to disrupt incoming signals to the cerebellar cortex prolonged the time it took the mother mouse to calm the young mouse. If the young mouse cannot sense being grabbed by the back of the neck, it will not curl up; if the cerebellum cannot receive signals, the mouse will not submit. Additionally, heart rate slowing and changes in body posture are directly mediated by the parasympathetic nerves and cerebellar outgoing nerves. This series of physiological responses makes the young mouse calm, submissive, and curl up, facilitating the mother mouse carrying them safely to a secure place.

　　Therefore, the skin behind a cat’s neck is not dead; on the contrary, sensory nerves there allow the kitten to receive the signal “I am being carried.” The subsequent acupuncture-point-like physiological response does not result from “nerve pathway blockage” but is guided by brain signals to produce a physiological phenomenon that facilitates the mother cat’s transfer of its kitten.