Cats learn the names of their friend cats in their daily lives
nature.comI have tried to train my two cats with just these words:
1. "Let's go" - morning meal
2. "Upstairs" - I am going to bed
3. "Dinner" (plus clink bowls together) - evening meal
4. "Lie Down"
and their names.
Emerald, who prefers being upstairs, definitely responds to "Upstairs": she charges upstairs when I say it. Jade remains enigmatic and skeptical: that seems to be her nature. But if she is in the mood for a tummy rub, she will respond to "Lie Down".
For me, the great charm of cats is that it is impossible to tell the difference between "No, I don't understand you." and "I understand you perfectly well, but I plan to ignore you completely until I feel like responding".
My cat and I have one firm English phrase: "3...2...1". I say that whenever I want him to make up his mind, and at the end I always close the door, pull the sweater from under him, or whatever. He definitely knows what it means, and knows I mean it.
> between "No, I don't understand you." and "I understand you perfectly well, but [nothing in my nature compels me to care]".
This is where he and I are for lots of other stuff, and I also love him for it.
As a parent, this works well with toddlers too. When you start counting they know a storm is coming and they can avoid it if they choose their next answer/action carefully...
“No Dad stop counting!” is how my toddler retorts. Works wonders though!
"I want that done by the time I count to one" terrifies 5-7 year olds.
"I don't want to have to count" I said to my son the other day, whence he scurried
I say this exact thing too. It usually plays out as:
- ask kiddo to do something, get a "no" or "I'm busy."
- I say "I don't want to have to count." Continued resistance 30% of the time.
- If resistance then counting starts. Compliance comes earlier or later in the counting 95% of the time.
If counting finishes then guaranteed tears also has a plan because wife and I have time to see it coming too.
That is brilliant
In a similar vein, one of the charming things about my cat is when he chooses to step on my arm/hand/leg as he's walking around me or clamoring for attention. It's done so elegantly that it would be easy to say "oh that's just where he happened to step, and your arm was in the way."
But! Watch him navigate the minefield of my desk as he's going to get a sip of water and you'll realize that he absolutely knows exactly where each paw is going with extreme precision on each step. The effortless "oops did I just step on your hand so you'll notice me?" is anything but an oops :)
I loved when my parents' cat named Booboo (RIP litle buddy) would do the deliberate step onto my belly/arms lol, and also look into the distance/ out a window. Literally a call to action a la Calvin & Hobbes "so what are we doing today, human?"
Watch this without the audio, which is annoying:
https://www.tiktok.com/@danil_chernyy/video/7096930280765721...
> Jade remains enigmatic and skeptical: that seems to be her nature.
Its been shown in the past (not got the links to hand, and cba to google right now, but I'm sure they wont be hard to find) that cats know their name, its just often they don't give a shit when you call them. Which pretty much any cat servant will understand. Wouldn't be surprised that also applies to other words/commands.
EDIT: My own cat knows her name, but will ignore me unless she wants attension, sleep or bird watching is far too important to go and see what I want.
EDIT2: Fucking Typos!!!
That's weird, my cat will come no matter what name I call her as long as I use the same intonations. I'm not convinced she knows her name but rather that she knows pitches. Similarly my cat won't do tricks without the hand gestures despite me always using the same commands. Maybe my cat is just dumb or stubborn, or both. I have seen her run head first into a wall before.
The last part reminded me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0H25ve3qts4
I loved the monologue in Austin Powers when Dr. Evil is talking about his childhood and he mentions that his father was a boulangerie owner. I didn't know what it meant at the time and had to google: "Bakeries must bake their bread on-premises to hold the title of 'boulangerie' in France"
I forgot about that video, made me laugh. Thanks. But also, pretty accurate description. Maybe that's why she doesn't play chase as much anymore.
replayed this vid for 10 times, thanks
My cat ignores made up names every time (barely acknowledging that I'm speaking to him by turning his ear around), and will, probably 2/3s of the time, come when called.
The others he just ignores me.
Cats destroy the assumption that animals should do what we tell them to, because that's how it works.
Of course they have agency and their own goals. It's fascinating that humans are surprised and sometimes baffled by this.
Humans are regularly surprised to discover that the preponderance of evidence strongly suggests the universe was not created exclusively for themselves.
Is solipsism wrong, or is it just me?
Who believes that?
Sounds just like my 2yo homo sapiens.
Long and close observation of cats leads me to the inescapable conclusion that the latter is almost always the case. The number of times they understand some obscure thing exactly when I have no expectation that they'll get it at all, and their ability to selectively ignore the things I know they already understand, plus their ability to ask for complex things (where often I'm the dummy in the conversation) makes it a pretty inescapable conclusion. . .
A lot of times they respond or acknowledge as well, just not with their eyes
They wont look at you because its not their primary way of “seeing” or spatializing the world or their etiquette
Their ears might briefly move in your direction, their tail might flick in one of their frustrating ways, they might not move a muscle (which is a conscious response for them as well)
We thought that our cat didn't respond to her name until we noticed she always flicked her tail when we said it. It really blew my mind.
The tell tail cat.
Tails tell tales.
yep, my previous cat responded with his tail every time. we let him roam outside every day and he would always come home when we whistled or called his name. also walked with us like a dog off a leash.
our current cats are less responsive, maybe cause there's two of them, so they have more cat-like comm.
> ...their ability to ask for complex things (where often I'm the dummy in the conversation)...
I love the way you put that.
Whenever my office door opens and the cat walks in, she's either there for a visit or to collect me, in which case she waits by the door to lead me to her dish, her toys, or whatever she has in mind. Beyond communicating with humans, cats are pretty good at training them, too.
> cats are pretty good at training them, too.
Mum has a cat who has this particular (and peculiar) habit of drinking from the faucet whenever he's had treats.
It's pretty hilarious how well he's trained the humans. Whenever he's had a treat, he'll walk toward the bathroom and flick his tail, ears turned back, expectantly waiting for someone to follow. If no one follows, he'll continue on his way and jump up on the counter top. If he still hasn't collected anyone's attention, he'll emit a distinctive (and very squeaky!) meow that he uses for no other purpose than "I want a drink" and will do so periodically until someone comes to turn the faucet on. Otherwise he'll lay there until he's noticed (if not, he'll give up and finally go to one of the water bowls).
He's also finicky about the flow rate. If it's turned up too high (he prefers a gentle stream—almost a dribble) he'll stare at you until the flow rate is corrected.
Talk about training his humans indeed!
tbf I ignore my cats too.
We trained our cat from a very young age, and used it as a routine for getting treats or food.
The cat is able to do the following:
- sit
- spin (rotate in a circle)
- "up up" to stand on their feet, tapping my finger with the paws
- "high five" and "low five"
- "platz" to lay down on all fours
- "come on" to follow around
- "nom nom" to signal whether or not it wants food. You can see the eyes getting big immediately when it's very hungry.
- whistling to come to a specific spot
- double tap on a surface to signal to come to a specific spot
There's a theory that cats that don't scream but make the "urrr"ing sounds don't treat their owners like a kitten but as a mutually respected individual. And most people think that cats try to make the "urrr" sounds to communicate with humans.
These sounds vary in pitch and repetition and length and it's very easy to identify what our cat wants from us:
- when it doesn't like something
- when it wants to play hide and seek
- when it wants to go outside
- when it wants us to help it get to a specific spot (e.g. opening the door or making a fort on the bed so it can hide under the sheets).
- when it wants to cuddle
- when it wants to be hold in the arms so it can see what we're doing (on the kitchen counter, where it isn't allowed to jump on)
- and, of course, when it is hungry, that's the high pitch scream most cats do.
What I also wanted to add is that our cat has different moods of cooperating with the tricks it has to do when getting food. When it's only slightly hungry it tries to get away with cuddling us or "pushing" the head to the hand while purring...whereas when it's really really hungry it immediately does the tricks to get it over with.
I guess that cats are intelligent enough for tricks but they are also easily bored, that's why you have to change tricks to keep their brains busy and healthy.
This seems to be true. My one cat has different „urrr‘s“ and screams for wanting food, attention, begging someone to open a door and especially when he has to relieve himself but his toilet is not in an acceptable state.
My cat definitely has different sounds for different behaviors -- the most interesting one is when I leave the house and he didn't see me leave, I will get a notification from my nest cam that it thought it heard someone speaking, which will be my cat making a guttural sound that sounds eerily like "hello?" - he will sometimes do this if he can't find me in the house.
A second distinct meow he makes is when he is able to sneak past the baby gate to run down the stairs to the front door -- I call this his "see ya, sucker" meow.
Oh, I forgot to add that I think that cats only hear different pitches and aren't able to differentiate consonants from vocal sounds and/or their meaning.
A couple times I did the morning food routine while brushing my teeth (when I was in a hurry) and I was only humming the words while my cat was perfectly able to understand what I want from it.
Mine has trained the family that when he is hungry he starts slamming covered doors opening closed repeatedly.
Started off that we kept food in there. So of course he would try and get in. This lead to him being fed when was trying to get in. So now it’s a signal.
We have been well trained
A bit O/T, but presumably you meant "cupboard" doors. What I'm curious about is was this just a stretch of an autocorrect, or if English is a second language, as I could see that it might be a plausible approximation of cupboard if you'd only ever heard the word. I find this kind of thing fascinating, as when I'm trying to learn another language it's all too easy to hear something and switch it to another word that's close enough phonetically.
I had a series of strokes. I mix up words a lot since. Cupboard is correct.
One of my relatives has a similar thing. I hope things are goin well for ya my dude.
One of ours jumps up on top of our printer and reaches up on the wall and starts pawing at a poster when he's hungry.
What's on the poster?
A waterfall. I think he's basically just saying "Nice poster you've got there, be a shame if something happened to it"
Could be the paper makes a distinctive rattle, and he's learned it will elicit a distinctive response. Cats' theory of mind for humans isn't all that thorough, I think, but they have a very solid grasp of cause and effect. Honestly, I think they mostly think we're simple.
They definitely aren't, though, at least not all of them. My guy used to fight like hell any time I tried to trim his claws, so eventually I gave it up and let him look after himself, thinking, well, he's a cat and he's got plenty of carpet to scratch, he'll do fine. That lasted till he got an ingrown claw, so I had to trim that back, debride and disinfect the wound it'd made in his pad, then trim enough fur on his foreleg short enough to get a bandage to stick where he couldn't shake it off.
He really hated that, for all that it only took a couple of days to heal - they're better at that than even we are, and in a week you couldn't tell except by the missing fur that anything had ever happened. Well, by that and one other thing: for the balance of his life, when I went to trim his claws, he never put up much more than a token struggle. Where before he'd fight his way to the top of my head and leap clear, this was just enough of a fuss to make sure nobody thought him a coward, and no more - he'd learned it was worth letting me look after him a little, so he didn't need me to look after him a lot.
> Could be the paper makes a distinctive rattle, and he's learned it will elicit a distinctive response
Yep, I think that's the answer! The cat discovered the dog clicker!
Cats are incredibly good at knowing the time if it's the same time they probably already know and are thinking "Whatever food giver make those thumbs dance".
Mine gets treats at 9pm and she knows almost exactly when it's 9pm maybe a 1 minute deviation. This is without an external cues. She sits there waiting for me if I forget.
I can confirm that cats knows the time. My cats come everyday 3:30 pm sharp signaling that is food time. They are outdoor cats and often go wandering but by 3:30 they are back home.
my cat totally knows her name but listens to most all of my vocalizations for anything she may want. she comes or meows if she hears something desireable (which, as she knows, her name is correlated with but not perfectly), and ignores me or leaves if she hears something undesireable (like "bath"). so it's not just a dichotomy between misunderstanding and apathy, but more a case of personal assessment and desire.
> For me, the great charm of cats is that it is impossible to tell the difference between "No, I don't understand you." and "I understand you perfectly well, but I plan to ignore you completely until I feel like responding".
Incidentally, this is why I dislike cats so much and prefer dogs :)
There's a very funny gag in the credits of the movie Inside Out by pixar about cats vs dogs.
https://youtu.be/6DZVnX8bEAs?t=68
(If you've never seen the movie, it's worth a watch!)
I love how dog people feel the need to talk about how much they hate cats at every turn but cat people kind of like all animals
It's similar to smartphones. Android users express hate for iPhones and Apple way more than the reverse. Also I'd bet there's a correlation between smartphone brand and animal preference, with Android users preferring dogs and iPhone users preferring cats.
That's called a confirmation bias, friend.
So true
just don't get a Pyrenees. maybe this whole time he's just been a huge cat.
I was going to comment that my dog frequently pretends to not understand me, but he's part Pyrenees... I hadn't realized that was a trait of the breed!
My dachshund is the same. Affectionate as a dog, stubborn as a cat
>the great charm of cats is that it is impossible to tell the difference between "No, I don't understand you." and "I understand you perfectly well, but I plan to ignore you completely until I feel like responding"
It’s totally the same thing with retired racer greyhounds. Gentle, stoic, sleep 20 hours a day, and literally zero eagerness to please. They’re the most catlike of dog breeds.
It depends a lot on the greyhound, I think.
We had a rescue when I was little, a beautiful dog named Anubis. She wasn't too bright, but that was okay; she had a pal, an Eskimo dog called Raven, who was smart enough for the both of them and had a sense of humor to match - not but a foot high but she could jump up from a standing start and lick my face, and often did. Even on the worst day of my life, Raven could still get me to smile.
Anubis hadn't been a winner on the track but she loved nothing more than to run, and Raven knew it. Every so often, not more than once a month or so, Raven would pick a spot at the edge of the backyard fence. There she'd dig a hole bigger than she needed, because the hole wasn't for her; it was for Anubis, who'd wriggle through and promptly light out for the horizon. Meanwhile Raven amused herself and kept us busy with fruitless attempts to catch her. She'd run straight at me till I crouched down and committed to the lunge, and then she'd dodge on a dime and turn laughing to watch me faceplant in the dirt - cats might not laugh but dogs sure do, and Raven was the laughingest dog I ever did know.
This'd keep up till Anubis had done stretching her legs, and trotted back to press her muzzle into Mom's hand by way of genuine contrition. You could see she felt bad about it, but only to the extent she knew Mom didn't like it, if only because we were concerned with the day's occasions and she worried Anubis would get hit by a truck, which was a real concern on the gravel roads around where we lived then. Hell, Mom and I spent enough time ourselves tooling around those back roads with a six-pack in a foam cooler on the bench seat between us, her getting through a couple-three cans of Bud Light while she taught me how to drive and how to know every bird we saw without most times needing to pick up the Audubon next to the cooler. But just a few beers, barely enough to get buzzed, and most of the folks around there were a fair bit less restrained than Mom - less likely to worry about whether or not they might hit a deer on the road, more so to put a .308 through it, this being close enough to roadkill to keep the fish & game wardens sweet. So I can't blame Mom worrying, but Anubis must've either kept mostly to the woods or else just led a charmed life; occasional fleas notwithstanding, she never came to the least bit of harm.
As for the running itself, Mom understood that was just what Anubis had to do every now and again, but when she came back you could see she'd rather have found a way that wouldn't put Mom out. In any case, only once she saw Anubis was satisfied would Raven let me "catch" her, mainly so she could lick my face and I'd scratch behind her ears - it wasn't that I couldn't stay mad; it was that she was the kind of dog that you couldn't get mad in the first place. Both of them were.
Mom kept Rottweilers later - as pets, not for any other reason - and those were good dogs too, smart and kind and loving, but Anubis and Raven were special. God, I loved those dogs. Every kid should be so lucky.
I use "Let's go" for "it's time to leave this room", and the effect is that they flop on the ground, unwilling to move further. If that had been my intent, it would be a decent trick!
I believe that's cat for "No."
I feel skeptical, I think cats and also most dog breeds understand only pitches that sound excited, because that means walk or tummy rub or food, but the actual said words could be anything, every time
When I'm training my dog I don't consider them to actually "know" a command until they recognize the word specifically. I can say "sit", "stay", or "lie down" in the exact same tone and my dog responds differently based on the word.
no hand gestures or order in which you say them?
Tone is just as much a part of language and there’s a good chance when teaching language you ended up teaching the tone pattern better than the phonemes. It’sa much better pattern March until you have a large vocabulary.
This is really more of a comment on a lot of the replies to this comment than the comment itself:
Something to keep in mind is that cats have a very broad but different hearing range from humans. Their central frequency range of hearing overlaps with human speech but doesn't entirely cover it on the low end. So if your voice is low, you might need to raise your pitch a bit to help the cat recognize it as vocalization or differentiate it.
And they also don't really naturally communicate with vocalizations (unlike dogs, I believe); cat to cat communication is through other means. They literally learned to meow to talk to us because we don't understand their communication methods (sometimes, but not always, because we lack the senses to do so). So I think that's something to keep in mind if you feel like your cat is being obtuse: they're literally working pretty hard to make you understand them, actually.
So like, it's not that surprising that sometimes they just don't want to put in the effort. You'd probably feel the same way.
There are many stray cats in my neighborhood and I see them communicate vocally all the time. Mothers definitely call audibly to locate their kittens, and vice versa. They'll often call out to each other as adults, I think for mating?
These cats do a thing where they get inches from each other's faces and make a very loud, very long moaning sound. I imagine it's something in the local gene pool (my neighbor has been feeding strays for over a decade, I hate it)
Hmm my dog acts like a cat or i suck since i definitely cant tell between "No, I don't understand you." and "I understand you perfectly well, but I plan to ignore you completely until I feel like responding".
I've learned that dogs will "say" no. Cats "say" no by ignoring, which we often misinterpret as that they do not understand
I have two cats, a young male (perhaps not coincidentally, a colony rescue?) and a very elderly female. When I let them outside, if I call them to come in, the younger will find the older and herd her to the door. He then vigorously resists coming inside himself. He's also very vocal, and his tone of voice will change depending on whether he's happy to see me and wanting pets or if I'm ruining his stalking and spying or he doesn't want to come inside (the other just ignores me and does whatever she wants).
> (the other just ignores me and does whatever she wants).
This made me remember a funny meme about dogs and cats.
"A dog is able to learn up to 250 words and tricks and gestures. A dog can count up to 5 and perform simple math. Equivalent human age: 3. A cat doesn't give a fuck and is sick of your shit. Equivalent human age: 42"
My cat has at least 20 meows. I understand about 5 of them. Some of them are easy, like if she wants food or if she wants me to follow her for whatever reasons. Some of them I have no idea what she's going on about but I can tell it's different then her wanting to play or just wants to be pet.
For real. Off the top of my head there's, MeerrrOOOOOwww MerrrOOOOwww, the loudest one, huge inflection in the middle. Generally while strolling through the house, back and forth. I think that's the "I'm bored" one. But he'll also do it if I stay up. If someone is out of bed past curfew he'll do it. I have to close the bedroom door or he'll wake the wife.
If you say summon him he'll probably ignore you but if he's interested he'll whimper errrderrruuderr softly while walking toward you.
Then there's, MOWLLLLL MOWLLLLL, slowly howling, that sometimes means he's sick and gunna throw up. Usually right on both the rug and the carpet.
Then there's, MAHHH MAHHH, just two in quick succession, which literally sounds like mama. That's the I want something one, generally he wants catnip from the outside plant.
Just heard him go MOOOOW MUUUROWLLL MUUUROWLLL howling, but he's just pacing back and forth from the window and now wimpering at me. So I assume he's misses mama (the wife).
The funniest is and most unique is, BRRRRAHDAHDOP, which he yells before tearing full speed through the house or down the hallway for seemingly no reason. I think that's either "Look at me" or he's so excited he can't contain himself and it slips out naturally.
Side note: this was an interesting challenge creating and optimizing these onomatopoeias
> But he'll also do it if I stay up. If someone is out of bed past curfew he'll do it.
One of my cats also does this. It's a very distinct vocalization that I only ever hear when I've stayed up too late and seems to mean "Why aren't you in bed already?" If I hear that, I know I've stayed up too long. (And usually, she seems to mainly want me to get into bed so that she can curl up and go to sleep by my feet or on my legs.)
That checks out, yeah. If I stayed up late, mine would sometimes fuss at me till I went to bed, where he could stretch out with his back against my front and watch Youtube with me while I scratched his chin and brisket.
He'd tuck the top of his head under my own chin, and the tip of his tail would just reach my knees. I'm five foot ten - mongrel tabby or no, he was a big cat.
Do you also get a BRRRP or MRRRP when he's snoozing and you put a hand on him? Our cat does that. And a similar noise to say "hello" when coming into a room or approaching you.
If you like that sound, there's a subreddit called ActivationSound that's literally just videos of that. Probably my favorite subreddit.
Thank you for this, this is the best thing ever.
Yes! When you catch him off guard or wake him, he'll coo like that. It's similar to his whimper when approaching.
He's sweetest when he wakes up, so it turns into more of a coo than whimper since he's purring a bit.
Seems to be his hello/greeting call.
"Analysis:
One cat completed only the first trial before escaping from the room and climbing out of reach."
I quite enjoyed this bit.
That and the fact that the statistics don't seem very crisp says everything you need to know about cats.
Anecdotally I can confirm that my cats know each others names, not sure if they would recognize on a monitor though.
Oh, I don't know. If wasps can recognize one another's faces - and they can! - I don't see any reason in principle why cats, who have orders of magnitude more neurons to work with, shouldn't be able to recognize images of one another.
I have two cats, one is quite clever and responds to her name, dinner, hop up (for it's ok if you want to sit on my lap) and a few other things. I can ask her to get one of her toys too if she wants the play. She also very rarely meows.
The other cat is not so bright, if you ever say anything to him directly he'll only meow back and come over for a pat, that's it. It's just a back and forth screaming match if you talk to him. The chopsyest cat I've ever met. Just shouts at everyone and everything without purpose.
I think what I'm trying to say is, cats have a range of intelligence and some of them are quite good at learning names.
I have 7 cats now and have had had 15 cats in my life. My whole extended family has always had lots of cats.
Two things stick out at me:
1) Cats really do respond to being talked to and interacted with. Cats that are talked to often get more responsive and communicative.
2) There is huge genetic IQ gaps, lol. Some cats are so smart they blow your mind, others are mouth breathers. The normal distribution is real.
Not just IQ, they have full blown personalities that you could probably write Shakespeare dramas about.
Or Brodaway Musicals.
Or The Lives of the Caesars...
I believe those go hand in hand. The smarter the animal usually the more personality they have.
This. Not limited to cats either. I've noticed the same in dogs and even some cows.
Same rules apply to humans as well. Interaction early on develops personality and intelligence varies genetically by a wide margin.
Intelligence is not well-defined even for humans, and we have little understanding of what goes on in an animal's "mind", yet people like you use terms like IQ for cats like they're established facts. For all we know, it could be that some animals/cats just don't "care" as much about interacting with humans. Just like some humans do.
> we have little understanding of what goes on in an animal's "mind"
Maybe you do. Behaviorism went out with disco and bell bottoms, and good riddance; more recent researchers often take an ethological approach - Goodall, not that pervo freak Skinner - and what we've learned from corvids only scratches the surface of the extent to which we're lately discovering that animals other than humans are a lot smarter than we tend to give them credit for.
The human animal, on the other hand - well, that you put quotes around "mind" in your comment earlier suffices alone to demonstrate that your confident assumption of knowing what you're talking about here lacks quite a bit for congruence with reality. Hell, I've met crows who proved to have a very accurate theory of mind for me - much more so than you here give the impression of having for them.
I just meant general intelligence over all varies among animals. I'm not stating facts, I'm stating my observations.
Personally, it's pretty easy over time to tell the difference between apathy and intelligence when you spend a lot of time observing interactions.
"People like you" should check your tone btw.
"There is huge genetic IQ gaps, lol. Some cats are so smart they blow your mind, others are mouth breathers. The normal distribution is real."
I'm very curious about how well someone with a "lot of experience in digital advertising" is positioned to define "genetic IQ gaps", "smart", etc. as it applies to cats & others. Perhaps instead of throwing these terms around like they're candy, you should submit your findings to an scientific journal (and get rejected :) ).
You seem to be really offended by this statement, you even went to his profile to find something to attack him?
GP isn't trying to write a paper, he's stating an observation based on his experience with the animals he's had.
Feel free to dispute the above statements with research or anecdotes, but solely insulting people and getting angry just reflects poorly on you.
I can only assume you are one of those stupid cats seeing how you handled yourself in this thread :)
This might be the worst post I’ve ever seen on HN.
No need for the condescending disrespect.
This isn’t what hackernews is about. I’m quite shocked at this post.
> The other cat is not so bright, if you ever say anything to him directly he'll only meow back and come over for a pat, that's it. It's just a back and forth screaming match if you talk to him.
More pats for less work? Sounds like the smarter one to me.
Yup, one wants to play and the other wants pets
Some are smarter than others, but I think, in terms of animal behavior or ecology, cats are basically carnivorous rabbits.
That's not to say anyone who has had a trainable cat doesn't like them - mine have their moments - but I think it's worthwhile to consider that.
In what way do you see a similarity to rabbits? I think of them as being pretty different, with cats being less social and more likely to take risks.
rabbits are just prey animals and that shows in their behavior and attitude, whereas cats do a lot of predation themselves.
However, cats are far from the top of the food chain themselves, which is reflected in a lot of their behaviors.
House cats and big cats don't behave very differently.
https://lithub.com/house-cats-and-wild-cats-arent-actually-t...
Uh, that article is not about house cats vs big cats. The still-extant ancestral species of the domestic cat, F. lybica, is a small wildcat, as were its ancestors, and as such a predator but not an apex predator. Big cats, which typically are apex predators in their respective ecosystems, are a wholly separate branch of the felid family.
Recent research showed that house cats share nearly 95 or was it 96% of their DNA with big cats
The same is true of humans and orangutans, that comparatively small percentage can clearly account for massive differences in behavior and intelligence.
Sounds like a lot, until you realize they share 90% with humans.
Some rabbits (or rather hares) are pretty hardcore.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Backcountry/comments/ul61y6/snow_ra...
I’m disappointed that this isn’t a reference to Monty Python.
A friend of mine tooking in a cat that had been owned by a deaf family.
This cat didn't make any noise (meow) at all, if she wanted to go out, etc.,
she would run between you legs, (yes, totally under-foot!) a major trip hazard.
I taught her how to vocalize very quickly, which she understood we would hear, and would respond too.
Meowing is definitely a "please parent me" behavior. It took quite some time to domesticate two feral cats that were nearby -- many years. The meowing reflex was not present until much much later. One cat would open her mouth but forget to make the sound, but she eventually caught up to her brother, who would correct her by looking at her and meowing if she forgot.
It's possible she was making high-frequency noise beyond the detection range of the human ear. I've read that cats use these kinds of noises for calling their kittens.
Grown cats don't meow to each other. It's a noise they make to get our attention. Each cat must figure out, on their own, that meowing works to get humans' attention.
A cat with deaf human parents would have never learned this, or would have learned that meowing doesn't work and to try something else.
Exactly, cats have an extremely wide range of frequencies they can both create and hear, if they are vocalizing at all
They almost all independently chose to pick the signature one we associate with cats, just for us
It has a lot to do with the fact that a cat's meow hits many of the same frequencies as a crying human child.
I’ve read that before, it engages well but I’m not sure they all know what human babies sound like, it just gets a reliable response and other frequencies are either ignored or don’t get then the response they like the most
Yeah, cats don't necessarily know that, they stumble across it by trial and error. We respond to it because we are to some extent hardwired to have our attention grasped by that kind of sound, so we tend to our crying babies.
"works to get humans' attention"
Our cat manages to make a noise that sounds like a young child screaming "mum" - it really upsets my wife.
Cats definitely meow to each other. For adults it's typically an aggressive warning, but it happens.
It's also worth noting that kittens and their mothers communicate heavily via meows even when no humans are present. Food-begging is a pretty straightforward association from there.
Cats don't meow as a threat. They growl. The varying tones and pitches in which they do so carry information of their own, and sometimes are in similar ranges to a meow. But listen closely to the timbre and intonation next time you find the chance, and you'll probably find yourself able to notice how similar the two sounds are not - not least in that a growl carries much more information.
You're right that meows are by default how cats talk with their kittens. They also bring kittens dead or nearly dead prey, as the first step in teaching them how to hunt. That they choose to use the same idioms with us I think constitutes an eloquent comment on how clever they find us.
Our cat responds to Enya.
When I'm working from my desk at home, she often crash lands in my lap and then rolls over, all four paws fully stretched as the ultimate invitation for a belly rub. This blocks my arms from doing work, but she doesn't care.
Next, I turn on Enya, the exact same playlist every single time. The moment the music starts she starts cycling her front paws with her eyes closed, as if riding an invisible bicycle upside down.
I need to fully enclose her with both arms to not drop her and I love the arrogance in making that my problem, not hers.
I don't know why it's Enya. It could be that it was playing the first time this happened, creating a positive memory association. Or maybe she just likes the sounds. In any case, no paw cycling without Enya. When I pause the song she immediately stops, opens her eyes and stares at me in digust, which is cat for: put it back on, idiot.
So, I totally believe some cats are intelligent enough to understand that a particular human vocalization is usually "aimed" at them. However...looking at the boxplots, the data is underwhelming. There is a huge overlap between the congruent and incongruent response times, even in household cats. If anything, this is evidence that fewer cats than expected notice the incongruence.
The alternative explanation being, of course, that very few cats care. And, really, in these circumstances, why should they? But the boxplots demonstrate that the effect here is marginal.
There is a phone app, I think it was called “MeowTalk” that purported to machine learn cats vocalizations.
With two of our younger (4yo sibling tabby) cats it seemed to “translate” their infrequent meows as “I love you” “I want to play”, so kind of, yea, probably, not impressive.
But for our third cat, (an elderly female cross somewhere between Maine coon, silver tabby and sofa, a 22 pound ball of complaints) the app suggestions were often along the lines of “I don’t feel well”, “I’m in pain”. She does have arthritis (and is under vet care) so that response from the app was seemingly reasonable.
"This leash demeans us both".
I am both surprised and not surprised by this.
It does kinda make sense, I have 2 cats (from the same litter and have been together their entire lives. 14 yo now). They each clearly respond to their name and not their brothers name. Or at least respond differently, but I have noticed they look up sometimes if I call one and not the other (but won't run up to me). I have long though it was them responding to the "pet voice" that we all seem to use. But if this was the case that explains it better.
My can knows the names of all family members and can sometimes respond appropriately to "where's mom, go find mom". This is of course only if she wants something and came to me for it.
I have definitely noticed that. The cat I had growing up we had a close bond. He stayed with my parents though when I moved out. Any time I was coming to visit my parents would mention my name and he would perk up. I don't think it is tied to anything I gave him because I wasn't really taking care of him, I was rarely the one that fed him. He just slept on my bed and we spent a lot of time together.
So there has to be some understanding there of... something. I am curious what they internalize it as.
On the flip side I have to wonder. I live alone. My cats have very rarely actually heard my name. I would be very surprised if they had any concept of what my name was. But if they don't, do they think something different. It is interesting.
I wonder if they pick it up by what draws your attention - so they may assume your name is texting sound or phone ring if that's all they ever see you react directly to.
huh I didn't think about that. I think we can fairly safely assume that them knowing their name is not an understanding of language and is just a recognition of a sound. At least based on any research that has been able to be done.
So that would make sense in a way. And does lead to some... funny thoughts on what they may think my name is.
Isn't that all names are anyway? Of course some people have names that mean other things, like say River, but you don't need to understand any language to know your name.
True, I think more. As a human even if I hear a name in another language I still fundamentally understand that it is language.
Where I have to wonder if for a cat, I could train them to have a sound I play on their phone to be their name for all they care (kinda going back to them possibly thinking a ringtone could be my name). It's still just a sound that they are responding to not a word.
Maybe like you said though, the difference doesn't matter. Maybe even as humans while we understand that a name is language it is still something else entirely? I don't know, that is a realm of cognitive study I know nothing about. But it is fascinating.
> As a human even if I hear a name in another language I still fundamentally understand that it is language.
Reminds me of the classic Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry sketch "Your name, sir?": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNoS2BU6bbQ
This happened to me too! After I left for school and work, the cat would consistently start sleeping on my old bed a few days before I would return to visit, something that she never did under normal circumstances.
We think that she must have heard and understood when my parents talked about upcoming visits, but it's always hard to tell with cats. Maybe she was picking up on emotions instead of words, or maybe she was psychic.
The other day on Reddit [1] there was a video of farm animals reacting to their names, but I think it's just responding to the "pet voice", or rather to their food provider vocalizing in their direction.
1 - https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/comments/uq5yjo/animal...
I think this is true for some of the pets (e.g. many birds are quite dumb), but pigs are one of the most intelligent mammals, and cows are not dumb either.
Apropos Far Side cartoon comparing what cats hear versus what dogs hear.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/6d/36/fa/6d36fa7cc9d762952a62...
Small digression, but we recently got a dog. Acclimation with our two cats has been a long process. One cat is fine with him, the other spends most of his time in our daughter's room (which has a child-gate on the door to keep the dog out).
The speed at which the dog figured out the cats names was incredible. You say the friendly cat's name and he would look up with mild interest. When he's fast asleep you could say the shy cat's name and he would bounce up going, "Where? Where? Where?"
A weird amount of people I knew growing up named their cats just "cat" or "kitten". Every dog had a name (even in households that had a "cat" cat) but not all cats. I wonder if the cats figure their own names out in these cases :)
I grew up in a house of at least a dozen cats. All had names. Our very first one, Lightning (who was seemingly very intelligent and lived to his late teens), did not know his name as Lightning. For all he knew, his name was Puss-Puss, because he had been called that a lot when he was younger, and responded extremely well to it throughout his life.
It's acceptance of the fact that cats don't respond to commands.
That's how I grew up. We always called them "cat" or "kitty" and would get more specific as needed and based on how we felt about them at the moment. Anything from "the cute black one" to "that orange fool."
We were always told that no one really owns a cat, but we should take care of them all because it's good luck.
That's weird. I don't think I could live with an animal and not name it. But then again, I named my Roomba.
My last cat was with me for 20 years and neither of us seemed to feel the need for a name. We both knew who he was, and why bother beyond that? I think the difference is that dogs who live with humans tend to look to us to help them understand who they are, while cats never want telling no matter how close the association.
I didn't use the "pet voice" with him, either. Dogs, sure, but generally when I have something to say to a cat I say it like I would to a human, and that seems to mostly work okay.
That said, I find as with dogs that cats respond more to pitch than to content; I'm not sure their theory of mind for us extends far enough to recognizing that we also have language, but they certainly do learn some of the sounds we make.
When I needed him to come find me, I'd whistle just above the highest pitch I could hear, and he came running because I'd taken care to associate that sound with treats in his kittenhood. As his hearing range contracted in his dotage, I switched to the more usual "pspspsps" sort of sound, which worked about as well.
Granted, I grew up with cats, and my mom was of a mind that the best way for me to learn their style of manners was to let them teach me directly. This worked well enough that it's long since ceased to be a surprise when someone says something like "but our cat doesn't like anybody!" So I don't know how well my experience is likely to generalize.
Thanks, reading someone recounting their decades-long friendship with a cat was a nice chaser for the drowning kittens comment :)
My neighbors' father would also think nothing of drowning unwanted kittens among other "old world" type of things that seem ghastly now.
Oof yeah that is something I only heard of as an adult - a friend's dad apparently did it a couple of times. Gruesome
Probably says a lot about how much brutality we've engineered out of daily living. I recall having a visceral reaction to hearing about the kittens as a child, and I imagine it's fairly natural to feel that way. I'm glad I lived in a time and place where that kind of desensitization wasn't necessary.
Unfortunately it is still fairly common in small villages (in Hungary at least - which is quite poor outside of its capital). Spaying is expensive and cats do produce plenty of offsprings, and it is not even like with dogs that you can just keep inside the backyard..
(Though what I heard about is not drowning, but slamming them hard to something :/)
Hell, our toddler has a name but we still mostly call him kiddo.
With cats you have to learn nonverbal communication.
The slow blink while looking into their eyes means "it's cool, we're cool"
I taught our cats to recognize a double-tap on the butt as "get up, I gotta get up"
gotta read their body language... and yeah, sometimes it DOES say "I'm not currently interested, no offense"... but the thing to know is, they also read YOUR body language. They might not understand too many words, but intonation matters, posture matters, movement matters
random cat trivia: They can't taste sweet tastes at all because a crucial gene for it got knocked out by a mutation a long time ago
I found a book entitled "Electronics for Cats" stuffed under The Cat's bed. Should I be concerned?
Nah, not till you find your favorite iron there too.
My guy never quite got the hang of the temperature control, always cooked the hell out of my tips. (That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it...) But I do have to give him that his joints were usually better than mine.
The effect size is about what I’d expect from an experiment involving cats and attention.
With some assistance and teaching, cats and dogs are capable of learning to speak in sentences. In 2018, a speech pathologist named Christina Hunger, who used AAC devices to help special needs children learn to talk, tried applying a similar approach to her dog, Stella. It worked surprisingly well. Stella could speak in four-word sentences with a vocabulary of around 15 words by her first birthday, and was up to 49 words by her third birthday. Since then, many other people have followed the same process to teach their pets how to talk.
And of course, "BilliSpeaks"
The Naming of Cats T. S. Eliot - 1888-1965
The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn’t just one of your holiday games;
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there’s the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo, or James,
All of them sensible everyday names.
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
But all of them sensible everyday names,
A name that’s peculiar, and more dignified,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?
Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Names that never belong to more than one cat.
And that is the name that you never will guess;
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
My girlfriend and I recently separated. She took one cat, and one stayed with me. During a discussion in her apartment she mentioned the cat that stayed with me by name. Her cat frantically started looking around the apartment to see if his old buddy is there.
Such amazing creatures.
Scanning the paper the effect seems surprisingly weak (and has p=0.045!) and weirdly dependent on family size (it looks as thought he difference only exists in larger families). While the results seem believable I'm not convinced by the results as presented.
Cats have friend cats? I'm surprised. This seems like the exception rather than the rule. Seems to me like most cats prefer a life without other cats around... with human caretakers and all the comforts they provide... kept all to themselves.
In my almost-50 years I think I've only met "cats with cat friends" a handful of times. Even when we had a pair of sibling cats that "liked" each other, when one of them died the other actually seemed "happier" after, which is kind of sad and dark.
In nature, cats form colonies where they take communal care of the young, old and infirm. One of the core behaviors of cats is hunting and providing for colony members who are too weak to do so.
Cats being "solitary" animals is largely a misunderstanding of cat behavior towards humans due to cat affection being expressed differently than dog affection.
I have had cats nearly my entire life. I love dogs but I am a cat person. All of the cats in my life have been loving social pets.
I hate when the idea that cats can't bond, isn't loving, all of the stereotypes of cats are thrown around. Because they are just wrong.
I do think a fair amount of it is not knowing how to properly socialize a kitten. But even a socialized cat will never be as affectionate as a dog. Or at least not the way a dog shows it.
But I have 2 cats, they will sometimes sleep in different rooms and sometimes cuddle up basically on top of each other. They almost every night will sleep in my bed or at the very least will sleep on the cat tree next to me.
I have noticed that when I have had to take one of my cats for an extended stay at the vet the other is noticeably... different. I don't want to assign an emotion since their emotions are different. But he is not himself. This often starts when I put one cat in a carrier.
They seem to know when I am in a mood and really need that affection.
But I also acknowledge that a cat isn't for everyone. Some people need that constant unquestionable affection that a dog gives you. Cats are more subtle.
The thing is, I like both dogs and cats and I really like our cat. But I've only ever had failures in situations where I tried to introduce additional cats into a solitary cat situation. Which is sad, because I'd actually kind of like to have a second cat here. The only time we had any luck with two cats was when there were two from the same litter.
I know some people accomplish this, but it honestly seems like the exception rather than the rule.
(EDIT: I should mention that our cat came from a shelter where she lived with a pile of other kittens. But her response to other cats now is... GTFO here)
It takes a long time to introduce a new cat, we have 3 indoor cats all introduced one at a time. It took around a month for both the second and third cat to be completely accepted.
The approach we took was to keep the new cat in a separate room for the first few days to allow them to begin to get used to the new scent. We would then swap blankets to give them further time to get used to each other's scents. Then we'd open the door and allow them to interact under supervision for short periods and then we gradually increased the time they could interact each day.
I'm not sure this would work if you had outdoor cats. We didn't actually intend to get the third cat, but we ended up taking him in as our friend's original cat refused to acclimate to the point that he was spending all but 20 mins a day outside of the house and so they needed a good home for their new cat.
> It takes a long time to introduce a new cat, we have 3 indoor cats all introduced one at a time.
Yep.
> It took around a month for both the second and third cat to be completely accepted.
Oh boy that's nothing. I think we were like 10 months. They still don't get along flawlessly but it is now tolerable. We did precisely the recommended steps (scent swapping, separate spaces, associating each other with food, play nearby each other).
It's funny if you think about it, in a certain way cats are very much like people. Those that are poorly raised or socially isolated when young have issues later on to adapt to having others around, whereas if they've been brought up properly (and maintain that through practice) then it's a lot easier for them to make new connections later in life.
It's probably true for a lot of other animals as well.
It is hard because adopting is important but you can't really know what was in a cat's past. One of our cats is very grumpy at the other. This could be caused by something in her past that we aren't aware of. Our other cat also has very poor manners for a cat (he stares at everything) that might have developed by being raised with other animals.
What I wish people told us was that sometimes it isn't enough to do everything right. We planned everything and did as much as we possibly could to socialize them effectively and it ended up only fine after a lot of struggle. I had always figured that people who had cats who hated each other simply didn't follow the best practices when introducing them to each other. But that's clearly not the case.
> But I've only ever had failures in situations where I tried to introduce additional cats into a solitary cat situation.
Cat colonies, as I understand, tend to follow the the eighth rule of Fight Club, which can make introductions seem unsuccessful even when they may not be.
> In nature, cats form colonies where they take communal care of the young, old and infirm.
Yup. I spent several years working with feral cat colonies throughout central Massachusetts in a TNR program, and they are quite similar in their social structure to lions, less like other more solitary cat species. The colonies at their core tend to be groups of related females, with adult males roaming between a few different groups of females. Neutered males tend to act more like females and stay with a particular colony. Given the artificial food supply the "crazy cat ladies" provide, you will see colonies of unrelated individuals, but if there are multiple food sources readily available the colonies will tend to fracture by maternal line.
It's been interesting to see local shelters realize this, and create colony rooms for cats that have been properly socialized. It keeps the cats out of smaller cages, and likely simplifies the care and feeding of the cats in the colony.
It's also a great way to pick a few cats to bring home. My local shelter will just let you into the room, and you can hang out and decide which ones (and how many) you'll bring home.
This is how we "chose" our cat. My wife and daughter sat down in the room of kittens and picked the one that came over and started snuggling and playing. It chose us.
She's such a mellow "no f's given" cat. Lives in a house with two border collies and doesn't take any crap from them and lies around totally chill all day long. I suspect this might be due to her socialization at the animal shelter.
My local area also has several outdoor colonies that are managed (Neutered, health checkups, etc) because they realized that leaving fixed feral cats in place and taking care of them prevents other feral cats from taking their place and breeding further.
"hunting and providing for colony members who are too weak to do so."
Is that why my cat dropped a dead vole on our doorstep last week? Is she sad that we're deprived of such essentials? :-)
"You poor incompetent kitten."
Many species are more social and cooperative that people think.
I wonder if seeing nature as more ferocious, competitive and individualistic that it really is comes from psychological projection.
I recommend Kropotkin's book about Mutual Aid regarding this topic. Disregarding his obvious political affiliation he is one of the first critics of the then-emerging social-darwinist readings of animal behaviour with regards to Evolution and therefore deals with this topic quite extensively.
He was a zoologist apart from all the other topics he had time to deal in because of his noble heritage. Here is the wikipedia article [0] since I do not know how HN regards links to e.g. libgen.
That'd make him one of the last of the old-line ethologists, before the dark interregnum of the behaviorist scum began - I respect Kropotkin considerably more now than I did five minutes ago. Perhaps I'll read him after all.
feral cats tend to form colonies but wild cats are solitary, like the european wildcat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_wildcat
Housecats are descended from the African wildcat, not the European one. The African wildcat forms colonies just like housecats.
Much of the myth that cats are naturally solitary creatures comes from people studying the behaviors of the European wildcat and attributing them to housecats, which is wrong because that's not what housecats are descended from.
Here's a picture of all our cats snuggling, 6/7 are best buds with one loner. And the longer still follows around the other cats just doesn't do the puppy pile thing.
I guess it depends on the cat. Mine is like that. She was a stray. I found her in my backyard one day. I took her in. I groomed her. I enriched her with toys, food, love, and all the luxuries a modern cat could want. So naturally she goes on the prowl each night marking territory making sure none of the other stray cats in the neighborhood get adopted too.
Cats are weird. My mom's cat fights will all the neighbor cats except one, whom she just started hanging out with one day. I suppose it's possible they are long-lost siblings or something.
I mean, I'm being downvoted, whatever, but this is what I mean. Their social model is entirely different than ours. Or dogs. There are other cats they learn to tolerate, or even cooperate with. But it's not clear that it's "friendly?"
I know such friend relationships can exist with them, I just rarely have seen it.
A lot of people get one cat and they get used to being alone. People who get more than one cat generally get them from the same litter.
But cats are social animals and will absolutely bond with each other. Even cats not from the same litter will bond with other cats. Usually it takes a careful and patient introduction, which people don't realize. All they'll do is put the two cats in the same room, observe them fight, and come to the conclusion that their cat just wants to be alone. But that probably isn't the case at all.
Like many other animal (including human) behaviors, cats bond the easiest when young. Littermates, obviously, but unrelated cats as well. Second easiest is to bond an adult cat with a kitten. Introducing two adult cats to each other? It can take time and skill (doing it gradually is the key!), and depending on their individual personalities, they may become best friends, or only scarcely learn to tolerate each other.
We used to have two male cats adopted together as kittens from the local humane society. One was timid and mostly stayed home. The other preferred to be outside. They loved each other, though, and the indoor cat would wait at the top of the stairs for the other to come home.
The bolder cat was hit by a car one morning and died. His adoptive brother never fully gave up waiting for him at the top of the stairs. As far as he knew his brother just hadn't come home yet. It was quite sad. It wasn't long after that that he went outside for the last time and never came back.
I wonder if this is the first time a cat cafe has meaningfully contributed to scientific discourse.
I'll one up you one. F.D.C Willard was an accomplished published physicist.
Totally anecdotal evidence, but I have two cats and I give them "wet" food once a day. If one of them is far from the food bowls I say his name and he immediately comes running. If none is near me, both come running as soon as I call the first name (from different parts of the house). So, non-scientific, but I always assumed they could recognise each other's name.
Scent is the primary sensory input of a cat, not sight. They would be sniffing the screen and the experimenter's hands. I think this is the main reason cats fail the mirror test, not due to lack of intelligence. Cats eyes evolved for optimal visibility in the dark. To a cat, a backlit screen probably looks like sun baby.
>Scent is the primary sensory input of a cat, not sight.
Cat Senses : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_senses
Would be interested in studies- in cats and others- that attempt to differentiate the processing that occurs in response to human utterance, as "words" as we understand them are an abstraction that elide many subtle aspects of communication. Pitch, tone, vocalization duration and speed, mouth position, etc. So many signals there, some of which may be relevant for cats, some not.
Am sure cats are able to distinguish bird types by their voices, and other prey as well, to a much more sophisticated degree than we (our ears) can. Calling those vocalizations "words" almost certainly wrong.
There's a sound to which my two cats always promptly respond, the sound of me putting food on their bowls. And it doesn't matter how far they are, they hear and come in a hurry.
What if I never call my cat by name but call it as ksksksksksks? Friend cat ought to understand who is called but seems that is more about my voice then about names.
"Names" are just our arbitrary label for "a voice, forming a certain sound"
Okay, but:
> The other 19 were household cats (mean number living together: 6.37)
This means the number of cats, right? Since it's contrasted to the cafe cats. So these are basically three families with six or seven cats each. The question being: how was it easier to find three such families than a bunch of families with three cats? What kind of place is that? I mean, sure it's Japan but still.
My cat knows when I am talking "cat talk" to another cat. She lifts her head up as if to let me know she knows what's going on. I feed a wild cat I've called Dorian since he's grey, he's lost an eye so I may rename him Doran. My cat may know the name but she knows the tone of my voice for sure.
I can definitely attest to this, I have two brother cats, and usually calling one of their names gets the other's attention to, as if to say "oh I see how it is, you invite him and not me".
I'm also really happy this is empirically validated, its's so easy to notice things like this and wonder if you're crazy.
Cats understand doors (particulary fridge doors (with food inside), or doors where it will be nice and warm) and will often paw them. And will go mental when you come back go mental when you go out for a fish supper (this is in Scotland).
Otherwise, they just look at you as if you have the IQ of a wombat.
Unfortunately my cat thinks his name is "Cat" which leads to some obvious confusion :-D
Animals are so smart. Has anyone seen brain scan studies to see what’s going on cognitively? Would be interesting to see what parts of the brain light up, plus if that’s different in house vs feral cats.
Good luck getting cats to put up with an fMRI! Closing a $100M seed round would be a piece of cake by comparison.
My partner is convinced that her cats understand hundreds of english words. Most of the time it seems harmless and I laugh. A small part of the time it drives me to madness.
> However, it is still unclear how cats learned the name-face association. Further study should address this point.
Will we ever know?
Are learning sounds the same as learning specific names?
I'm convinced my cat fully understands english, but is biding his time to murder me and take over.
No. They just associate repeated sounds, without any semantic whatsoever, just like bird songs.
Cats do not have the brain circuitry for semantic networks (based on a language concepts) evolved yet. So called language areas are required.
How this crap is even got through a peer review? Rithoric question, I know.
This is one of note thousands of videos of cats and dogs using buttons to talk.
Cats, and all mammals, have a neocortex. Theirs is not as deeply layered or large as humans, but they most definitely have the ability to reason abstractly, are aware of themselves, think emotionally, and engage in complex, time aware planning over long periods.
Your views are wrong. Language areas like Broca's region in the human brain are a consequence of physical distribution relative to the connectome and sensory endpoints. If you were to rewire the millions of connections to the lips, tongue, mouth, ears, and other body parts to be locations on the neocortex, broca's region would be somewhere different. You have about 1 square meter of neocortex responsible for all of your perception and cognition, and almost all of it is uniform. Neurons aren't differentiated by function, and animal experiments show that plasticity allows for arbitrary rewiring.
The literature in the field shows that human cognition is likely superior to other species in the depth of cortical layering and size of the organ. It's likely the only reason elephants and whales or other animals with larger brains can't compete with humans is the mere absence of hands and vocal organs. Our range of colors and audible senses are important but lesser than many animals.
Give an orca hands and human speech and there's nothing we know about neuroscience to imply that the animal wouldn't be smarter and more capable than humans. There's a lot of evidence that the killer whale would be more intelligent than humans in many ways.
The cortical layering and columnar architecture of neuron clusters differs between species, and seems to dictate the cognitive depth of abstract reasoning. There may be different algorithmic constructions in neural connections that favor human level cognition.
In principle, however, human brains aren't terribly different from many other large mammals, and elephants certainly display complex, emotional, symbolic, and abstract reasoning well within a range comparable to human experience.
Your notion of animal cognition is unscientific and biased toward an assumption of human superiority that isn't grounded in fact. Neuroscience is slowly and tirelessly matching toward reverse engineering the brain. The more we learn, the more we find similarity in the basic functions of mammal brains, from mice to humans to blue whales.
I think that video is terribly cute and the cat is adorable, but I also remain unconvinced that a cat can understand, "morning now, before night". That is too abstract. For context, it took my (then) 4 year old human child many months to understand "before" and "after". He would use them indistinctly to mean "not now".
I watched the video and I want to believe, but... I don't know. I have cats, I know cats are intelligent, cats can be trained to understand single words, etc. But I'm just not convinced any cat can string together English sentences like this. Also, the concept of time might be a bit abstract for a cat who is always living in the present moment. And then there's the most viewed video on that channel[1] where he presses the "cuddle" button, and then... doesn't cuddle. He seems like he knows pressing a button get a reaction, but he doesn't know which button is which. Good morning human, time to play with the disembodied voice buttons again.
Like I said though, I want to believe. Can you think of any longer videos that might convince a skeptic?
This one [1] isn't very long, but I think it shows that the cat (Billi) does associate the buttons with a meaning.
The owner is playing with Billi with a toy on a string, then drops it on her back. She then quickly (within 10 seconds) presses "No", then "Back", to tell her owner to get the toy off of her back. If she was just pressing buttons to get a reaction, this would be no more likely than "Morning" "Love you", or "Want" "Hello", or any other arbitrary pair of buttons.
That is more compelling, but I'm still not convinced. Out of all the videos I've watched it's the only one that comes close. Smells like broken clock theory to me.
"No" is another higher-level abstract concept that I wouldn't expect anyone to master before more basic concepts. If the cat could say "ears, no" or "tummy, no" with similar confidence, then I would be convinced it understands combining the concept of "no" with another word. And those seem easy to test too. Cats don't like you messing with those areas.
> Give an orca hands and human speech and there's nothing we know about neuroscience to imply that the animal wouldn't be smarter and more capable than humans.
Humans have one more difference from others: human cubs are born helpless. They even do not know how to use their eyes. They need to learn everything themselves. All the pre-wired genetic firmware was destroyed by evolution. It is very inconvenient for mothers of course, but on the other hand this shift from hardware to software gives unprecedented abilities to adapt to different environments. And probably it gives a lot of experience of making sense of the mess of input signal that can be useful later. And of course it is a factor of a selection: if you cannot learn how to use your eyes, then you are not Sapience enough to breed.
Those videos are comically misleading.
The author acts as if cats can understand abstract concepts and combining words into a SVO grammar. And with dozens of words!
"later morning" "later play [with] dad" "love you mommy"
This is simply far outside the cognitive abilities of cats.
Edit: Confirmation bias is so strong that I get downvotes for writing this.
You're getting downvoted because you are making a strong contrary claim with no evidence whatsoever. It's the equivalent of two kids going:
"Yes it is!"
"No it's not!"
"Yeahuh it is!"
Not only there is widely available scientific literature on the topic, but is is also stuff that people should have learned in high school if not before.
Do I also need to provide evidence that the earth is not flat?
Then please cite it.
Citations here should be trivial.
I can absolutely cite and argue that the Earth is not flat - and win.
I suspect you will not be able to do so for this claim you are making.
You can search on google or google scholar for 10 minutes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_language
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human%E2%80%93animal_communica...
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-10261-5
https://owlcation.com/stem/The-difference-between-animal-and...
Besides, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Here the extraordinary claim is that cats can understand grammar and abstract concepts.
Otherwise I could claim that birds can play chess and demand you to provide papers to prove the opposite.
I encourage you to read some of these nice sources you have selected. Allow me to quote:
> Such signing may be considered complex enough to be called a form of language if the inventory of signs is large, the signs are relatively arbitrary, and the animals seem to produce them with a degree of volition (as opposed to relatively automatic conditioned behaviors or unconditioned instincts, usually including facial expressions). In experimental tests, animal communication may also be evidenced through the use of lexigrams (as used by chimpanzees and bonobos).
and
> Seyfarth, Cheney and Marler reported that vervet monkeys (now called Chlorocebus pygerythrus) responded differently to different types of alarm calls2 (although some of the calls overlap acoustically3 and this view is currently debated4). More recently, west African green monkeys (Chlorocebus sabaeus) rapidly learned the novel referent of an alarm call that was given in response to a drone5. Referential signaling is not limited to primates.
You'll notice the parent did share sources! They presented a bundle of them, of actual cats using actual signifiers to refer correctly to signified objects.