Clichéd, one could claim that cats are idiosyncratic little animals. However, they are also adaptable when it comes to dealing with those around them. You have managed to understand human communication to a certain extent. Among other things, they can find food with the help of human looks or finger points or distinguish between different states of mind of people. According to new study by a Japanese research team around the scientist Saho Takagi, cats even know the names of their cat friends and sometimes also those of their human family members. The results were published in the journal Scientific Reports released.
If the name and picture didn’t match, the animals seemed surprised
For this study, the research team examined a total of 48 cats that live in traditional households and in so-called cat cafés, where many cats spend their day together with the café guests. In a room known for the animal, the cats were seated in front of a laptop. First, the names of known cats, which had previously been recorded by the cat owner, were played four times over the laptop speaker. After that, pictures of well-known cats popped up on the screen. Half of the illustrations matched the names heard, the other half did not. The research team’s idea was that the animals would be surprised if they couldn’t connect the name they heard to the picture. As a result, they would examine the monitor longer. In a second experiment, this procedure was repeated using faces and names of known human family members. The names were spoken by a stranger to the cat, the subjects were only cats living in one household.
The results of the relatively small study show that cats living in traditional households looked at the screen longer when the name of the well-known cat did not match the image shown. This effect was not recognized in the cats from the café. According to the researchers, this could be due to the fact that the individual names of the café cats are not called that often because so many cats live together there.
The second experiment showed that not all cats can interpret the faces of familiar people. However, animals that lived longer with the same people and lived in larger families observed the images shown longer if they did not match the person’s name. The longer the cat lives with a large family, the more often it hears its name and may be more likely to connect with it, the research team says.
But why do domestic cats remember the names of their feline friends? One possible explanation, according to the study authors, is competition between the animals. When a cat gets food from its owner, it is called by him. If a second cat living in the same household as the other cat is called by its owner, this means that the first cat will not get food. However, cats are not in competition with humans, which the researchers say could explain why the animals are less able to connect human faces and names.
However, two participating cats had little to do with the study. The study authors write that in both experiments, one cat only completed the first attempt. Then the cats fled the room. Quirky animals.