> August 6th, 2020
and the ink to the meeting presentation is broken, but here is a 2021 paper by the same author maybe about the same study
https://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10071-021-01530-3
Domestic cats (Felis catus) prefer freely available food over food that requires effort

Combustion: So do humans, and every other animal who can reason.

"Contrafreeloading" has only been observed in some domesticated or captive animals that are regularly fed. I guess wild living animals go for the easiest way to get food.

Here is the paper's testing setup.



The paper doesn't say cats never eat food out of the puzzle, just that overall they tend not to make the extra effort. I didn't bother to read in the paper how their data compares to other captive animals and how big a difference there is

I guess the upshot is that cats are proud to be bored, it is a marker of their self worth.