Cats take heed to us greater than it appears: they outperform infants in a phrase affiliation sport | Science | EUROtoday

Since cats and people coexisted, no less than 10,000 years in the past, these felines have decreased in dimension, their fur has modified coloration and — in some instances — their delinquent character has been tamed. But that is not all: in addition they take heed to folks greater than you assume. This is usually recommended by a brand new examine printed within the journal Scientific Reports. The analysis, led by Japanese scientists, has delved into the power of home cats to type fast associations between photos and phrases, a key course of in language acquisition.

In the experiment — initially designed for human infants within the Nineteen Nineties — 31 cats have been positioned in entrance of a pc that displayed two photos, a solar and a unicorn. For 9 seconds, the drawings grew and shrank on the display screen, whereas audio performed of every animal’s caretakers saying two meaningless phrases, keraru for the unicorn and parum for the solar The cats watched and listened to those sequences till they turned bored, which was indicated by the animals’ eye contact with the display screen. The undeniable fact that they stopped wanting on the pc was interpreted as that means that the stimulus now not appeared novel to them.

After a brief break, the pictures have been performed 4 extra occasions, though with the phrases modified. That is to say, keraru was reproduced along with the picture of the solar and parum subsequent to that of the unicorn. The cats spent a median of 33% extra time wanting on the display screen—with some bewilderment—after they heard this discordance with the primary experiment, suggesting that they detected the change and fashioned an affiliation of their heads between the phrase and the picture of the display screen. first experiment.

Shao Takagi, a cognitive scientist at Azabu University (Japan) and lead creator of the analysis, was shocked to find that “cats, like human babies, could form associations between words and images in a very short period of time.” ”. This signifies, in keeping with the researcher, that “cats pay attention to what we say in everyday life and try to understand us more than we realize.”

The examine concludes that cats generated this relationship sooner than human infants as a result of the overwhelming majority of felines discovered every word-image affiliation after simply two nine-second classes. In distinction, most 14-month-old human infants wanted 4 15-second classes. The outcomes do not essentially imply that human infants are slower at studying phrases. Takagi qualifies: “The cats quickly lost interest in the stimuli, which made it seem like they were learning faster than humans, but it is not a real difference in learning speed.”

Genetic change after domestication

This conduct has a number of explanations. The first is that cats are notably delicate to sounds. Eleonora Toresi, a veterinarian on the Gattos Hospital – in Madrid – and specialised in feline scientific and conduct, assures that the outcomes of the examine didn’t shock her as a result of felines “have a much broader range of hearing than that of humans, dogs and others.” animals”. Furthermore, their response was natural because these pets usually react to short, intense stimuli like those applied in Takagi’s experiments. That is also why it is difficult to design scientific research, since it will never be known if the cats “stopped associating the sound with the image or simply got bored,” says Toresi.

Even so, it doesn’t detract from the invention. “It is true that cats pay attention to us, and try to understand us, more than we think. There is a false belief that they are independent, that they don’t care, but cats have always had this curious behavior towards humans, only now we are the ones who pay more attention to them,” says this veterinarian.

Science, in some way, backs it up. In 2014, the magazine PNAS published a study in which the authors sequenced the genome of 22 domestic cats from different parts of the world and compared them with wild cat species in Europe. The researchers found that at least 13 genes were modified from one species to the other. This genetic change could have played a key role in the cognitive differences of the domestic cat and helped it develop the ability to pay attention to humans, knowing that this could involve a food reward.

Although it doesn’t compare to the loyalty of dogs. Cats are wilder and more unpredictable than their canine counterparts because their genome suffered less evolutionary pressure. It’s not a surprise, considering that dogs interacted with humans 30,000 years ago. Furthermore, the cats were not selected for a specific purpose, like dogs. It is believed that domestication began just after the first agricultural practices in the Middle East, when wild cats, attracted by rodents nesting among grain warehouses, left the deserts and settled in towns and villages to hunt them. And in that way, those cats and the first farmers began to tolerate each other.

They associate, but they do not understand

There is another reason why the cats responded this way to the Japanese experiment. Ignacio Morgado, emeritus professor of psychobiology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, ​​points out that, like all mammals, felines “have the capacity to acquire conditioned behaviors. Even laboratory rats, which are a less evolved animal than cats or dogs, are capable of obtaining this type of conditioning.” Laboratory tests have been carried out with rodents that manage to link images with sounds or with other images. “This capacity for association between a sound and an image, or between a sound and a smell, or a place, is very characteristic and typical of almost all mammals,” says Morgado.

But don’t be confused. This behavior has little to do with linguistic ability. “In the study, cats were able to discriminate words and animations, not by their meaning, because they obviously do not have linguistic faculties, but by their ability to identify images and sounds, and associate them,” highlights the psychobiologist.

Ultimately, it is a question of survival. Pets have the reflex to pay attention to their guardians because they are looking for a reward. Rodrigo Quian Quiroga, neuroscientist, points out that “if a cat grows up domesticated by people and receives auditory calls, it is sensible that the animal develops the power to tell apart between various kinds of calls.” He does not understand the word, but rather associates it with a subsequent action, based on his experience. “This reaction is not synonymous with understanding,” emphasizes Quian. Morgado agrees and assures that this confusion may arise from a tendency of ethologists—those who study animal behavior—to “become so attached to their pets that they attribute human faculties to them.”

Toresi provides: “The mistake of anthropomorphizing animals is often made. My cats are like my children, but I know they are cats, so I am not going to treat them like children. The key is to understand what its nature is. “I’m not going to pretend that they understand words.” This veterinarian highlights that there are nonetheless many questions surrounding cats and their conduct: “There are many aspects that we do not know and these investigations are important to know how our pets interpret us and thus be able to communicate better with them, to know how to respect them and improve their quality. of life and its coexistence with humans.”