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.
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 :)
> 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.
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. . .
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.
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.
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.
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 :)
>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.
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 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
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.
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 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
herodotus|3 years ago
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".
happimess|3 years ago
> 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.
nlh|3 years ago
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 :)
Crosseye_Jack|3 years ago
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!!!
toss1|3 years ago
cookiengineer|3 years ago
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.
treeman79|3 years ago
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
dghughes|3 years ago
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.
clairity|3 years ago
andrepd|3 years ago
Incidentally, this is why I dislike cats so much and prefer dogs :)
crmd|3 years ago
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.
daenz|3 years ago
poisonarena|3 years ago
stormbrew|3 years ago
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.
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
oogetyboogety|3 years ago
rendall|3 years ago
t-3|3 years ago
sakopov|3 years ago
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"
tarentel|3 years ago
rcarmo|3 years ago
One cat completed only the first trial before escaping from the room and climbing out of reach."
I quite enjoyed this bit.
zwieback|3 years ago
Anecdotally I can confirm that my cats know each others names, not sure if they would recognize on a monitor though.
idk1|3 years ago
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.
cm2012|3 years ago
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.
bawolff|3 years ago
More pats for less work? Sounds like the smarter one to me.
zebraflask|3 years ago
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.
News-Dog|3 years ago
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.
at_a_remove|3 years ago
bitwize|3 years ago
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.
fleddr|3 years ago
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.
rossdavidh|3 years ago
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.
salgernon|3 years ago
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.
Smoosh|3 years ago
nerdjon|3 years ago
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.
phkahler|3 years ago
personlurking|3 years ago
1 - https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/comments/uq5yjo/animal...
BayAreaEscapee|3 years ago
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/6d/36/fa/6d36fa7cc9d762952a62...
anotherevan|3 years ago
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?"
smcl|3 years ago
LancerSykera|3 years ago
praptak|3 years ago
micromacrofoot|3 years ago
We were always told that no one really owns a cat, but we should take care of them all because it's good luck.
_carbyau_|3 years ago
pmarreck|3 years ago
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
WalterBright|3 years ago
throwanem|3 years ago
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.
canjobear|3 years ago
ericlavigne|3 years ago
https://www.hungerforwords.com/
https://fluent.pet/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8k2upr9vCE
Johnythree|3 years ago
https://www.youtube.com/c/BilliSpeaks/videos
bravura|3 years ago
The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatterWhen I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there’s the name that the family use daily,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey— There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter, Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter— But I tell you, a cat needs a name that’s particular, Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular, Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum, Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum— But above and beyond there’s still one name left over, The name that no human research can discover— When you notice a cat in profound meditation, His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation Deep and inscrutable singular name.friendly_chap|3 years ago
Such amazing creatures.
sparsely|3 years ago
cmrdporcupine|3 years ago
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.
devmor|3 years ago
Cats being "solitary" animals is largely a misunderstanding of cat behavior towards humans due to cat affection being expressed differently than dog affection.
cm2012|3 years ago
https://ibb.co/c2TgWSK
https://ibb.co/pfnYjSW
https://ibb.co/9W5jCVh
https://ibb.co/gJbKTkC
jart|3 years ago
lukas099|3 years ago
DFHippie|3 years ago
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.
zdw|3 years ago
CaptArmchair|3 years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._D._C._Willard
rvieira|3 years ago
Flankk|3 years ago
News-Dog|3 years ago
Cat Senses : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_senses
unknown|3 years ago
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jonahbenton|3 years ago
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.
lobocinza|3 years ago
eimrine|3 years ago
purerandomness|3 years ago
aasasd|3 years ago
> 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.
dghughes|3 years ago
4oo4|3 years ago
I'm also really happy this is empirically validated, its's so easy to notice things like this and wonder if you're crazy.
zabzonk|3 years ago
Otherwise, they just look at you as if you have the IQ of a wombat.
Melatonic|3 years ago
chapulin|3 years ago
throwanem|3 years ago
dmtroyer|3 years ago
sammalloy|3 years ago
Will we ever know?
unknown|3 years ago
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sunjester|3 years ago
jjmorrison|3 years ago
ogma|3 years ago
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lngnmn2|3 years ago
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.
robbedpeter|3 years ago
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.
unknown|3 years ago
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