If I fits I sits: illusory contour susceptibility in domestic cats
sciencedirect.com
sciencedirect.com
Only difference is when the large cat gets annoyed for unknown reasons it kills you rather than just scratching your arm up and that’s just due to a difference in size not behavior it seems.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/what-cats-love-of-bo...
But, also, I was able to find a PDF download through Google Scholar (https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=95559247038477495...) -- for whatever reason the HTML link provides me with a "Download PDF" link even when in incognito.
That means that you likely use university/college internet and your institution has purchased institution access. This access is usually implemented in the form that everyone from the institution's network can download the paper, without having to log in at the publisher's website or anything. Basically an ip based whitelist.
I recall in the past when I was on a university connection, I was also greeted by some sort of affiliate banner indicating that I was getting access through the university.
But sometime 5-7 years ago when I ultimately stopped reading it, I distinctly remember a truly giant, fully scrolled and obnoxiously obtrusive ad for LG television that went and moved the page everywhere you scrolled. It was full of bright colors and strokes of lights going across the page and I remember it being in extreme contrast with the white-on-black plain text article.
It was then I realised that Ars, apart from slightly longer articles, is not much different that average publication. Then they launched their own 'video platform' which is what you are seeing promoted left and right.
That particular incident was a result of explicit cooperation and not some random ad placement.
"A well-known phenomenon to cat owners is the tendency of their cats to sit in enclosed spaces such as boxes, laundry baskets, and even shape outlines taped on the floor. This investigative study asks whether domestic cats (<em>Felis silvestris catus</em>) are also susceptible to sitting in enclosures that are illusory in nature, utilizing cats’ attraction to box-like spaces to assess their perception of the Kanizsa square visual illusion. Carried out during the COVID-19 pandemic, this study randomly assigned citizen science participants Booklets of six randomized, counterbalanced daily stimuli to print out, prepare, and place on the floor in pairs. Owners observed and videorecorded their cats’ behavior with the stimuli and reported findings from home over the course of the six daily trials. This study ultimately reached over 500 pet cats and cat owners, and of those, 30 completed all of the study’s trials. Of these, nine cat subjects selected at least one stimulus by sitting within the contours (illusory or otherwise) with all limbs for at least three seconds. This study revealed that cats selected the Kanizsa illusion just as often as the square and more often than the control, indicating that domestic cats may treat the subjective Kanizsa contours as they do real contours. Given the drawbacks of citizen science projects such as participant attrition, future research would benefit from replicating this study in controlled settings. To the best of our knowledge, this investigation is the first of its kind in three regards: a citizen science study of cat cognition; a formal examination into cats’ attraction to 2D rather than 3D enclosures; and study into cats’ susceptibility to illusory contours in an ecologically relevant paradigm. This study demonstrates the potential of more ecologically valid study of pet cats, and more broadly provides an interesting new perspective into cat visual perception research."
Thought that might be of interest to other who, like me, couldn't grok the headline.
So when they're saying this should be repeated in a controlled setting, they're not kidding. Why does a citizens scientist decide to not complete a study involving their cat? How about boredom, because their cat doesn't do anything?
With that said, all research has its limits. I think the authors have been very honest to discuss their findings and the limitation of the context - best case scenario someone takes the idea to the next level, worst case scenario we know it's a limited study and not conclusive.
Instead of startling, Brownie the mighty snake hunter reacts to cucumbers as: FAVORITE FOOD.
He gets a cucumber almost every day. He hunts the cucumbers, drags them to his lair, and consumes them leaving only a small trail of seed viscera behind in his cave.
He's been doing this before I knew about cucumbers scaring cats on internet, and I think lends credence to the hypothesis that cucumbers trigger a "snake recognition circuit": a cat raised to see snakes as food rather (vs the inborn threat response) reacts to cucumbers as food!
It took us a while to figure out why: it was probably a bird-of-prey detection circuit looking for gliding motion.
A feral cat that gave birth in a family member's garage in east San Diego (not the sierras but mountainous at ~3k ft elevation) found a rattle snake on their property one time. I had to scare her away several times while running around looking for a bucket and some long sticks because she did not recognize the danger at all. It looked more like she was approaching a strange new male cat that was about to court her than a venomous snake
Regarding the cucumbers: another family member had a cat in Europe in a village around 56°N - which is near the upper limit for snakes, so he's unlikely to have ever seen any, let alone eaten one - and the cat loved cucumbers. They had a greenhouse and had to be extremely vigilant after picking cucumbers because the second they'd turn their backs the cat would proceed to take nibbles out of every single one of them in turn, even if he was given one of his own. I think your cat just likes cucumbers.
Interesting, although I suggest it much more likely that this cat also really is triggering some kind of "snake recognition circuit", it seems to be driven by some desire to make sure each cucumber is "dead". If it were only about liking cucumbers you would expect it to gobble down the nearest delicious thing it sees, which in my own observation of the felis catus, this is their default behavior when there is favored food and no danger present, they tend to act like greedy vultures, though it differs from cat to cat.
That's the problem: people are extrapolating species-wide behavior from a tiny sampling of an animal with high variability. Some feral sisters have set up shop on a family member's property and given birth to several litters so at this point I've got experience with two dozen cats over my lifetime. The natural variability in personality I've observed in three month old kittens raised in the same environment by two biological sisters (who themselves have vastly different personalities), is staggering. I have no freaking clue where people get most of their cat stereotypes.
> If it were only about liking cucumbers you would expect it to gobble down the nearest delicious thing it sees
Why? I can't imagine anyone in my family eating a cucumber after a cat has bitten it for sanitary reasons so I expect he quickly learned that the more cucumbers he nibbled on the more he got (these are home grown cucumbers, not the giant monstrosities in US supermarkets, so he'd want more than one).
In Africa, most of the storks ate snakes; including really deadly ones. They would stomp them to death. That would probably not work on pit vipers.
my pet goose does this as well with anything remotely snake-shaped.
She's used to it now, but she used to do the same hopping-dance every time she'd encounter a garden hose.
hop hop hop with her wings out to appear bigger while quickly snapping at the 'victim' with her beak and then darting to caution with her head while keeping her distance from it otherwise and continuing the stomp dance.
must just be a bird thing (the dance, not the anti-snake behavior), I have my doubts that her soft webbed-feet would do anything but perhaps scare an actual snake.
https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2014/09/09/347093135/...
The story of humans adopting farming is complex, happened multiple times in multiple places, and different societies had very different priorities, methods, and environments to work within. In that context, saying we all did it to get drunk is a bit nonsense.
One of the more interesting things you can read about is how we've found some neolithic settlements that practiced farming for a few centuries, before returning to nomadic hunter gatherer status.
It's pretty clear the primary motivation was simply maintaining caloric intake in changing habitats, not specifically brewing bear, though the Sumarians were quite into that. In fact the oldest remains of what we might call "beer" that have been found were essentially naturally fermented porridge: very thick in consistency. So it seems pretty clear the porridge came first, at least in the Levant.
But probably because you could feed ten times the population, develop better tech, and pound to a pulp any neighbors who didn't follow suit.
However, I recently read something that claimed to debunk this, saying that even 50 proof is not effective at all at sterilizing things and it is merely a solvent for the active ingredients.
The reason I stumbled on it was because I'd been worrying about whether the alcohol free variants are effective, vs. alcohol potentially being a carcinogen.
So I think it's less obvious what effect 1% alcohol has than at first glance.
Nevertheless: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_beer
Does anyone know if there is a way to support them?
[0]: https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/delhi-hc-asks-libg...
Quirky study, but in the best sense of it.
"a cross-wiring of normally-distinct receptor arrays in the visual cortex, resulting in grand mal-like feedback seizures whenever the arrays processing vertical and horizontal stimuli fired simultaneously across a sufficiently large arc of the visual field. Since intersecting right angles are virtually nonexistent in nature, natural selection did not weed out the Glitch until H. sapiens sapiens developed Euclidean architecture; by then, the trait had become fixed across H. sapiens vampiris via genetic drift, and – suddenly denied access to its prey – the entire subspecies went extinct shortly after the dawn of recorded history."
1. https://www.improbable.com/ig-about/
[edit] added link to Ig Nobel awards
We’ve published the study in the peer reviewed Catster Magazine.