Eddy's Good News: Why Cats love catnip and a teenage hero in the US!

Virgin Radio

23 Jun 2022, 09:10

Every day during his show on Virgin Radio, Eddy Temple-Morris brings you Good News stories from around the world, to help inject a bit of positivity into your day!Be sure to listen each day between 10am and 1pm (Monday - Friday) to hear Eddy's Good News stories (amongst the finest music of course), but if you miss any of them you can catch up on the transcripts of Eddy's most recent stories below:Thursday 23rd June 2022

Fascinating news from Japan which looks at why our cats are so into catnip!

The narcotic quality of catnip and its Asian cousin, Silvervine, is a standing joke among cat lovers. The way cats chew it, rub on it, causes much mirth with owners and it’s long been thought they get a drug like buzz from the stuff. 

For the answer, say Konichiwa to Masao Miyazaki, an animal behavioural researcher and cat lover from Japan who’s been studying this very closely. He wanted to know why even the most docile cats seem to go bananas around our Nepeta cataria or the Asian Actinidia polygama.

The key to the bonkers-ness is a chemical family called iridoids, but they’re much more than intoxicants. It turns out they’re very good insect repellents and they work ten times better if they’re chewed. When they gave cats the leaves themselves, they almost never swallowed any leaf, they just chewed it and rubbed themselves with it enthusiastically. It turns out iridoids cleverly give the cats an endorphin rush which makes them chew and rub the plant, and that makes the natural insect repellents which protect them from things like roundworm, work much more effectively. So, your cat isn’t a drug addict, it's just hard-wired from thousands of years of experience to protect itself.

Via: goodnewsnetwork.org

Inspiring news from the US as a teenager dives into the sea to rescue a girl who drove her car into the sea.

18-year-old Mia Samolinski from Long Island New York made the classic rookie error of putting her car in the wrong gear then accelerated forwards when she meant to go backwards, Unfortunately for her she was in a car park on a dock and found herself in her car, in the sea, unable to get her door open.

Lucily, however, 17 year old Anthony Zhongor, who’s just joined The Marines, witnessed the whole thing and when he saw Mia banging on her window while the car was sinking, he didn’t think twice and dove in to help her.

Doors don’t open when a car is underwater, but during the struggle to get her out Anthony noticed that his weight on the bonnet tipped the back of the car out of the water and Mia escaped that way. He got her to dry land, she was crying but incredibly grateful, as was her dad, who praised Anthony for his quick thinking and heroism. The whole thing was caught on camera, just click the YouTube link below for more.

Via: YouTube