[ad_1]
Hey Kitty! Yes you. A new study suggests that domestic cats can react to the sound of their own name.
No surprises for you or most cat owners, right? But Japanese scientists say that they have provided the first experimental evidence that cats can distinguish the words we say.
Cats hear a lot of their names
So you are a bit like dogs, whose communication with people has been much more studied and that it has been shown that they recognize hundreds of words if they are highly trained. Sorry if the comparison offends you, Kitty.
Atsuko Saito, from Sophia University in Tokyo, says that there is no evidence that cats attach meaning to our words, not even their own names. Instead, they have learned that when they hear their name, they often get rewards such as food, games or something bad, such as a visit to the vet. And they hear a lot of their names. So, the sound becomes special, even if they do not really understand, it refers to their identity.
Saito and his colleagues describe the results of their research in the journal Scientific reports. In four experiments with 16 to 34 animals, each cat heard a recording of the voice of its owner, or another person, who was slowly reciting a list of four names or names of other cats, followed by the name of the cat.
Many cats initially reacted – for example by moving their head, ears or tail – but gradually lost interest in reading words. The crucial question was whether they would respond more to their name.
No sense of self
Of course, on average, these cats straightened up when they heard their own name.
Kristyn Vitale, who studies the behavior of cats and the human-cat link at Oregon State University in Corvallis but did not participate in the new work, said the results "make sense to me."
Vitale, who said she trained cats to respond to verbal orders, agreed that the new findings do not mean that cats give a sense of self to their name. It's more like being trained to recognize a sound, she said.
Monique Udell, who also studies the behavior of animals at Oregon State, said the study shows that "cats listen to you, what you say and what you do, and they learn from it."
Image credit: iStock
[ad_2]
Source link
