How Intelligent Are Cats? (2004) | Hacker News Reader

How Intelligent Are Cats? (2004)

messybeast.com

257 pointsmaxmouchet281 comments

When I was young, we had a cat that would sit down next to me as I was sitting in front of the PC, and start meowing. I would pet her head, and she would move away, a meter or so an continue meowing until I got up and petted her again.

Step by step, she would lure me all the way to the kitchen and give me a look said that, "Now that we are here anyway, how 'bout some of that food?". A bit manipulative, I admit, but kind of clever.

Also, I suspect cats tricked humans into starting agriculture so they (the cats) would have a steady supply of mice.

So I guess the difference is that humans are good at training dogs, while cats are good at training humans.

As the old joke puts it: dogs have owners, but cats have staff.

Love it.

I know that certain “redditisms” like “username checks out” probably don’t fly here…but seeing someone named “RobWilliams” responding positively to a cat joke just puts a warm smile on my face.

A dog looks up to you and a cat looks down on you, but a pig looks upon you as an equal. - Winston Churchill

A reply from cstross! That's it, I'm done for the day. Doesn't get better than that. Thanks for all the great books!

Side note: I think Peter Watts is also a "cat person". Something about cat people must contribute to them being some of my favorite writers. Which is odd, since I'm more of a dog person. Maybe if I wrote fiction I would hate what I wrote. And Amazon should include a "author pet preference" as filterable criteria when searching for books. If Greg Egan likes cats that would make for a trifecta.

I loved Saturn's Children!

Now that is indeed a profound insight on what is deemed intelligence. If the “Observer” in unable to comprehend the article objectives of the subjects, how will the fulfillment of the objectives ever be recognized as intelligence? Decades ago, I read some article on how people with more than 30 IQ points of separation, effectively were incomprehensible to each other. Whether it is true or not, it also highlights a fallacy that the superior intellect can somehow “emulate/simulate” the lesser, and thereby understand the person.

If you have a high IQ, you can get high and wasted and lower it temporarily.

No way to do that the other way around.

Temporarily becoming intoxicated doesn't fix this.

If your IQ is very high or very low, you likely have not spent a whole lot of time practicing things and pursuing things that typical people have. So the shared social language and thread of common experience that people depend upon to relate is limited.

Hmm, I think it's possible to raise your IQ by practicing and applying certain thinking strategies. Especially given that IQ is an artificial measure of intelligence.

Like any target, when it becomes a target, ceases to be a good measure. But I remember some of the parts. most where pattern matching. or memory retention.

Most humans cannot get better at this easily at least. You can always try...

On working memory, I think the average is 7, or something like that, Try to remember a number in inversed order and see if you get past that to 9-10 that´s pretty hard to learn too

I remember the day our class was asked about a dice. I was the only know that knew by observation the response to which number was under the dice not being visible.

PS They always add up to seven

YMMV

Except when they don't.

I had dice as a kid that did not follow this rule.

Not temporary, but IIRC muy mother's measured IQ went up by twenty points when she learned how ratios work.

Huh.

I now want to take a standardized IQ test, three times - once with sober, once mildly intoxicated by cannabis, and as intoxicated as possible while still being able to focus on the questions.

I'm very confident that the time it would take me to answer a given question would increase about linearly with my level of intoxication, but I'm not at all confident that I would arrive at a different conclusion.

> Decades ago, I read some article on how people with more than 30 IQ points of separation, effectively were incomprehensible to each other.

It’s more like “fundamentally perceive the world in a different way”, and generally leads to a lack of empathy towards the other group due to this difference of perception.

This is one reason why, at least until recently, US generals were not known for their high IQ.

A lot of marriages are this way and do fine. A diverse but comprehensive worldview is helpful when operating as a singular unit. You can be smart and ignorant at the same time in some ways, and that's okay.

No they are not, most marriages are not between people with that different IQ. Most people are not that different even. What a weird thing to say.

> lack of empathy towards

This should be:

… inability to empathize with…

Poor wording on my part.

There's a saying in our house, "All cats are very intelligent when it comes to food".

When I lived in Asia I "adopted" a lost kitten near my house. As I now had cat food in the house, the local streetcats know how to find me!

I had these two little kitten siblings; no idea where their mother was but they hung around the house, because food. If the food was out they would meow and whine for food, so I would get up to bring them food and they would hiss at me for getting too close to the food bowl before I even had a chance to put any food in.

I never thought that was especially intelligent; "biting the hand that feeds you" and all that.

After dealing with many cats for two years I don't rate cats as very high on the intelligence department. They're basically autistic dogs. They are cuter though. And they don't eat poop off the street.

Yet, you kept feeding a neighborhood full of cats in the way they had trained you.

This. Cats seem stupid when convenient and are annoying but in the end they seem to get what they want.

Certainly domesticated cats are much more adept at predicting the behavior and actions of humans.

We had two cats, a tortoise-shell and a tabby. The tortoise-shell would come running when it was time for dinner, and the tabby would take his time. Once, I noticed that the tortoise-shell kept switching back and forth between dishes until the tabby got there, and I wondered why. It was probably so she could eat as much from both plates before having to finally commit to one. Kinda clever for a cat, in my opinion :)

anecdotal corroboration: my cat recognizes and responds to 5-6 different words/phrases for food, even from a visitor, but does not understand a single other word in any language spoken in the house: food, snack, treat, cookie, nom-nom. he responds to each of these uniquely (we use them to refer to different things he can eat).

Alternate hypothesis: your cat has a fluent understanding of the English language, and has a vocabulary as large as yours - but he doesn't deign to care about words that don't relate to your purpose (i.e., providing food).

Just say to yourself “I’m here to serve, stand up and follow your cat”

My cats often want to be fed or to go outside.

My one cat knows she can simply stare at me and I will get up and follow her.

My cats often want to be fed or to go outside.

Wheelchair-height handle-style doorknobs mean my cat goes wherever she wants whenever she wants.

Baby-proof door latches are my friend.

even round knobs aren't safe. i had a pair that would work together: one jumping to turn the knob while the other stuck their paw under the door and pulled.

Mine just flings the dinger and looks at me like "your attention will be interrupted until you open this door"

Doyoyoyoyoingggggg

Doyoyoyoyoyoyinnng

OK fine I'll open the door but this is the last time.

My cat would smack the metal blinds when he got stuck in my bedroom with me while I’m sleeping.

I just love how he knew that I was sleeping and found out how to make the loudest possible sound in my house, all while staring at me of course, without even having to raise his voice.

One of my cats observed my partner turning a doorknob on the bedroom door and subsequently started jumping and pawing the doorknob when the door was closed and they wanted in. No question that if it was a handle-type knob he’d have gotten in.

We had to rotate all our handles to vertical because our cat learned in 2 weeks how to operate them.

One of my cats, who is going on 13-14 years old (he was a stray, not sure of his exact age) has a specific pitched meow for when he wants me to do something for him.

He'll use that, combined with lifting one paw off of the ground to "ask" me to do something for him.

Once I follow him, he'll nudge his head in the direction of what he wants. The sink? He wants to drink out of the faucet. The counter? He wants treats out of the drawer. The pantry? He wants food. If he just sits there and cries I know he wants to be pet.

Omg this is the situation my cat, but instead of food it's for laying down with him and cuddling. He'll jump on the couch or bed, stare and/or meow until I lay with him.

> A bit manipulative

No. That would require a theory of mind, intention to deceive and a lot of cognitive abilities that cats don't have.

The cat simply learned to walk you to the food bowl.

Does "manipulative" describe the behavior itself, or certain internal processes (but not others) which can produce said behavior?

There is no theory of mind, it's a redundant concept. Apes can predict the actions of others as agents of the environment without needing an abstract understanding of what a mind is. Cats are probably able to achieve similar feats. Understanding that other beings and yourself have 'minds' only becomes relevant when the entity in question achieves a certain complexity of language.

https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/think...

My cat, Felix, brought his iPad pro from the other room, logged into HN (because Felix doesn't trust persistent logins), read the article to me, then discussed the implications before demanding I open the door for him, because he is a cat and doesn't want to open the door himself.

Any chance your cat has a black and white fur, a bag of tricks and a world-renowned reality TV show?

Sounds more like this particular cat's image was stamped on a sheet of blotter and the person has partaken in a couple of squares.

How would we know this is not cat's comment?

on the internet, nobody knows you're a cat.

Except on those pesky sites where you have to use your real name instead of being able to use an alias.

You can tell cats are smarter than humans by the way there are none of them on Facebook.

Except there are plenty of facebook profiles for both cats & dogs

There's a Facebook profile for probably just about every human alive, but that doesn't mean just about every human alive is on Facebook. Some shadow profiles get more intensive curation than others, is all.

Those are people pretending to be cats and dogs.

Cats all hang out on the dark web using things like TOR and tails OS, which is a portable operating system that protects against surveillance and censorship. [1]

[1] https://tails.boum.org/

My cat seems to visit a website that is made for cats.

My cat has the account names Felix1 through Felix22 and Anonymouse0, so you can trust me.

Is he still halfway through the door, making up his mind as to whether to go outside it start inside?

I'd suggest a read of https://everything2.com/user/sensei for one such tale.

aw, good old sensei. That’s a blast from the past

My old cat loved all those cat games on the iPad with the fish swimming around, etc. My cat was more of a hardcore gamer than me.

I am one of those people who had one view before a youtube video and another view after.

We had cats when I was a kid, and I would observe that cats are very good at tracking prey, at opening doors or at getting humans to open them, at figuring out who is the boss, and at bearing very, very long term grudges, but otherwise they operate in a system where the world revolves around them (apparently quite literally in terms of how they map the world).

This utility-focussed view of the world means they always get fed, but it also leads them to get stuck when exploring -- never paying attention to the fact that the neighbour's garage door does not just open, it also closes, for example!

So I have tended to see them as well-optimised, intelligent, but not necessarily "bright".

But the cat-mirror-ears video -- where a cat sees a reflection in a mirror, apparently understands that it is its own reflection and then... realises it has ears... that changed my mind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akE2Sgg8hI8

There is another "cat theory of mind" video where a mother cat purposefully and deliberately retrieves an object its kitten wants to play with, that scientists have talked about on twitter, but I can't find it.

A friend of mine has a cat that learned to play fetch as a kitten and never stopped playing. So unusual.

Incidentally the greatest moment in this video is not the "oh... that's what those are" moment, looking in the mirror.

The greatest moment is the head-turn and the wide-eyed look on her face as she is sitting down. Like: "oh this changes everything".

"How am I gonna tell the others.."

Does this self awareness mean cats have evolved now? Does this hold any consequence? Genuinely curious. I did not study any biology, so I don't know where this leads us.

I don't know. But after twenty years of cats around me as a kid, that video never ceases to confound me.

Because I've only ever seen cats confused, agitated or completely avoidant around mirrors.

I'd always assumed the avoidant thing was, you know, "don't look at the mirror cat and it won't look at me, and we won't have to have the fight where nobody wins".

But the ears video makes me wonder if cats don't look at mirrors because they can't quite process the implications.

My cats like mirrors? They use them to look at themselves and around corners while stalking each other. I don't think they particularly like being seen in mirrors any more than being seen normally though (which makes sense for small, specialized, ambush predators in the middle of the food chain).

Make videos of this.

There really is a conventional scientific view that cats are not capable of passing typical mirror-related self-awareness tests.

But it strikes me that the problem might be that the tests just aren't designed to test cats.

Every cat we’ve ever had very clearly understood mirrors. If that’s really the conventional view of scientists in the field, that’s basically willful ignorance.

Should be simple enough to prove, here is the test to pass: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test

Understanding how to track others in mirrors is one thing -- understanding with clarity that the cat in the mirror is them, is actually another.

The mirror dot test (which I imagine needs to be done really carefully with cats since they instinctively clean their own faces and necks, and have sensitive whiskers) shows whether the animal fully understands that the reflection is specifically of them, and can use that reflection to solve a puzzle.

I have said elsewhere that it's kind of just about possible for the ears-in-the-mirror cat to not understand the mirror cat is herself, but it is an increasingly implausible alternative.

The mirror dot test may have its limitations on a species basis, but it is not easy to come up with a universal test.

Yes, this is not normal.

Our cat does too.

We have a bathroom just off our living room that has a very large mirror above the vanity. The cat likes to get drinks out of the bathroom sink (we’re trained).

If she sits on a corner of the vanity when the bathroom door is open, she can see the living room in the mirror. She will stare into the mirror until she sees someone look at her. When she catches your eye, the meowing to turn on the sink begins.

She also stares at herself in a hallway mirror a lot. We think she thinks she’s pretty.

One of my cats looks me in the eyes through my bathroom mirror on a nearly daily basis, often meowing at me while doing so. He also likes nuzzling his face up against mine while our faces are close to the mirror, almost like he enjoys seeing us cuddling as much as actually cuddling.

Same with my cat as well! I am not sure she gets the mirror exactly; but Shem sometimes will watch us through it, otherwise just ignores it. She is never troubled by them.

My mother's cats love to hide behind things to bat at the other walking through, ambushing them.

After realizing the mirror could be used to spot a potential assailant and take evasive measures, they stopped trying to get each other at the doorway to my mother's bedroom.

I often wonder if animals don't do human things because they're too busy enjoying other desires and emotions. We run after abstract arts, concepts, way to craft tools etc etc but if they hit some kind of equilibrium and their brain just prunes stuff because they'd rather sit in the sun enjoying the wind. I used to be obsessed by ideas and nowadays all I want to do is sit near a pond around family, hug and watch the view :)

Perhaps the key here is the cat saw only its ears first, which looked like two potential targets. Then it had to reprocess after it realized they were attached.

Yeah. Though the typical view is that cats do not ever grasp that it is them in the reflection at all. That moment is just completely fascinating.

Hunters are alert to movement -- as you say, a cat is optimised for certain activities. They do also have strong proprioception.

"That's my leg" or "that's my ear" seems a reasonable discovery for a cat. I doubt that there was a deep existential discovery because it happened in a mirror.

Of course, pets of a species will vary in ability, that's only normal variation. We love them because they are simple, pretty, calming, and sometimes even helpful.

The animals that we love less, we tend to eat.

There's an obvious cognitive limit compared to humans. The theory of mind in humans conjures intentionality everywhere. Despite the (sometimes wildly) erroneous notions that this can produce, there is value in cooperation. Assuming intentionality has been an evolutionary advantage for our species.

Our species domesticated cattle, horses, and dogs because we have what we call "empathy". It's our mind at work building assumptions about the other.

It doesn't take much for the human mind to start imagining intentionality and companionship. Jesse Bering [1] offers the example of the well-known film, The Red Balloon, in which a simple balloon becomes a little boy's companion.

https://slate.com/technology/2011/02/theory-of-mind-and-the-...

Humans love their pets and often project human cognition onto them. It's a human thing. People often project traits onto their children as well. Pets usually avoid some of the worst effects of this projection. ^_^

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Bering

> "That's my leg" or "that's my ear" seems a reasonable discovery for a cat. I doubt that there was a deep existential discovery because it happened in a mirror.

It does, except that mirrors are not truly a natural phenomenon (most animals, contrary to literature, never really see their reflection in the water, only a shadow). So there is a chance that something more fundamental and novel is going on in the cat's mind.

And in most people's experiences and the view of science, cats do not appear to ever understand it is them in the mirror, whereas other animals (some crows for example) definitely do.

Of course cats know they have ears in the sense that they can touch them themselves. And they know other cats have ears because they can observe them. The question is whether they understand that their ears are the same concept as other cats' ears.

This cat appears very clearly to be learning that, in real time.

Whereas other cats don't ever do this in mirrors. They try to reach the cat in the mirror, they try to outpace it, they try to attack it. They don't usually look in the mirror and then touch their own heads or bodies, and they are not known to be able to pass the mirror dot test, where only understanding that the reflection is actually _them_ should allow them to pass.

This cat looks very much like it could pass the mirror-dot test, and that could be of interest to science.

(Though given how sensitive cats are to things placed on their bodies, how routinely they clean their own faces, and the presence of whiskers on their face, it may actually be impossible to apply the mirror dot test in a way that is meaningful)

> mirrors are not truly a natural phenomenon

That's true of course. Mirrors (looking glasses) are a human construct made to please human psychology.

> So there is a chance that something more fundamental and novel is going on in the cat's mind.

The cat's reaction is interesting, I fully agree. It's a mammalian brain.

But humans will inevitably imagine much more. As part of modern inevitability, social media (another kind of mirror) will be monetised with the wildest speculation.

Next we'll have Feline Blockchain. (Please don't tell me... there is already a subreddit for it?)

> They try to reach the cat in the mirror, they try to outpace it, they try to attack it.

Well, there's the old film trope of a movie character looking in the mirror and then smashing it out of anger.

Perhaps most cats instinct to attack the image of themselves is stronger than the desire to primp.

> Whereas other cats don't ever do this in mirrors. They try to reach the cat in the mirror, they try to outpace it, they try to attack it.

In my experience, most animals, including cats, just flat out ignore mirrors. At least all the pets I've had and that my family has had over the years, none of them ever reacted to themselves in the mirror.

In a way that suggests they do have some kind of understanding that they are just seeing themselves.

For my three cats, there was only an interesting reaction to themselves in a mirror the first time (or the first time in a long while; or sometimes the first time they experienced a specific mirror) they approached the mirror; then they seemed to ignore it (not sure if any picked up the use a mirror skill, as some cats in the article appear to have; I didn't notice it anyway). If you miss that first encounter, you missed it.

I had the same experience. My cat's first encounter with the mirror involved getting mad at the cat in the mirror and attacking it. Every other time after that, the mirror was completely ignored. They certainly did display cleverness in other contexts, such as figuring out how to open cabinets, or figuring out from the outside of the house which room we slept in so she could bang on the window to be let back in.

Such confidence and such ignorance, a powerful combo. I recommend you go spend some more time around wild animals or you'll continue to have trouble seeing the continuity between us and "the animals". We could be better stewards.

> Such confidence and such ignorance

The fact is that I am probably very much like you. Except that I won't throw barbs at a stranger who may in fact be a good person. Site rule: assume the best intentions. ^_^

I happen to love nature and animals. I guess we would agree about the terrible environmental consequences of human industry and consumerism. We have scaled the our greed and selfishness too far to hide it from ourselves anymore.

I'm not like you, bruv. I'd never un-ironically say "The animals that we love less, we tend to eat." Human-animal relations are a tad more complicated than that.

> There is another "cat theory of mind" video where a mother cat purposefully and deliberately retrieves an object its kitten wants to play with, that scientists have talked about on twitter, but I can't find it.

You are likely thinking of https://youtu.be/whVMP6BqcqU

I am! Thank you!

This is a very, very interesting video.

There are other interpretations (that it is for example mum/dad's favourite toy too for example). But it is worthy of discussion.

It seems fairly cut and dry.

I would contend that cats are able to establish a mental model of another animal in their mind and act upon it.

In particular, when hunting a mouse, the cat is thinking about what the mouse is thinking. The "if I hide here, the mouse won't be able to see me when it leaves its mouse hole."

That establishing of a model of another animal's mind in their own mind is likely a key part of intelligence.

> That establishing of a model of another animal's mind in their own mind is likely a key part of intelligence.

Yes -- this is literally "theory of mind", as I understand it.

But the really striking thing is that this sort of stuff you're talking about does not typically count towards theory of mind among scientists.

I mean they would make the counterargument that the cat catching the mouse might simply be learning through reinforcement that relying on their hearing is effectively more successful than relying on both sight and hearing, and that being unable to see the mouse and focussing on the sound leads to better strategies; it's possible the cat does not need to understand that they are invisible to the mouse.

And it is certainly possible for a cat to catch a mouse through long observation of its behaviours without engaging in theory of mind.

But then you watch cats play with each other (or the hilarious videos of cats sneaking up on observers and then freezing) and it's hard to believe they don't understand this.

> apparently understands that it is its own reflection

No, cats do not recognize themselves in mirrors. Very few animals do.

It's just very easy for us to see all sort of human behaviors in our pets.

> No, cats do not recognize themselves in mirrors. Very few animals do.

That is certainly the conventional belief.

But that conventional belief is founded on a single fundamental test (the mirror-dot test) that may simply be difficult to apply to cats.

Other animals were thought not to be able to recognise themselves until they passed that test.

When they pass the test, we say that animals of that species can recognise themselves in the mirror. It's a single observation.

So the question then becomes: are we so sure about that test?

If you have not watched the video, watch it a few times.

The only other really sensible explanation is that the cat only gets this far:

The mirror cat does everything I do! Every time! I know the thing on the wall has the mirror cat in. I can only see the mirror cat's ears... Ears are interesting. Do my ears look like that? Since the mirror cat matches my every movement, that must be what my ears look like. So if I rub my paws on my ears, and watch the mirror cat copy me, I should be able to confirm that interpretation...

The cat is definitely performing a slow, precise movement in order to watch what happens in the mirror. She sits up to make sure she can see it, before she does it. (She doesn't need to sit up to clean her own ears without looking). It's far too deliberate and studied; we know what cats look like when they are concentrating on movement.

That she comes up short of realising that the mirror cat is herself is definitely plausible. But even then it is demonstrating an enhanced theory of mind, because it involves predicting that the mirror cat's actions will always match her actions, that this can be used to test an idea, and that conclusions can be drawn about what she must look like when doing the same actions.

At some point, we have to accept that the idea that we are wrongly projecting our unique intelligence onto other animals is actually pretty arrogant.

I've had many cats over the years. They absolutely do understand reflections. I've watched them learning it in real time. Kittens will often try to get behind the mirror, play with the reflection, etc and over time most of them learn it's a reflection or at least not another cat and lose interest. I've frequently seen cats spot movement behind them in a mirror and turn around to investigate further. Makes perfect sense to me considering animals have been seeing their reflections in water for millions of years. It's not like they just recently learned what a reflection is.

> Makes perfect sense to me considering animals have been seeing their reflections in water for millions of years. It's not like they just recently learned what a reflection is.

I suppose. But I think this point is in danger of being overstated. Mostly animals don't see their own reflections in water; they certainly see others' reflections in water. But when you're close enough up to see a full reflection of your face in water, what you largely see is a shadow.

Yes, the shadow has a reflection in it, but I suspect that is quickly disregarded without much contemplation of what it means.

Mirrors are another matter entirely. You can really interrogate a mirror by seeing your own reflection at considerable distance, which is usually not possible with water.

Plus you can do so at leisure, because you are not necessarily prone at that point, whereas a cat at the waterline is at risk of attack.

So I don't know if, in the scheme of things, much about reflection has had a significant impact, until the mirror.

Edit to add: the fact that some intelligent birds are able to pass the mirror dot test might make sense in this concept of how easy a reflection is to comprehend. Birds have after all had millions of years of opportunities to interrogate their reflection in water at different heights, and to see a much clearer and more complete image of their own reflection. For a bird, still water really could be a mirror.

Wow. Yeah, that video is thought provoking.

I have a cat who will deliberately create a diversion so that she can steal my chair. I know when she’s doing it, but I go along anyway because it’s fun. The first time I saw her do this, it involved pushing the lift button on the motorized standing desk. I stood up, she jumped into my seat. She does similar tricks with other chairs around the house.

That could be Just a pavlovian response, unless she is creating different diversions every time.

Our cat does something similar to wake us up. When he wants to do this, he looks for something that can make a lot of noise with minimal effort. It might be something crinkly, or something that can be dropped, or a rug that can be scratched.

So we aim to prevent this by inspecting the area prior to bed, is there anything like that out?

The cat, then, surprises us sometimes by finding new objects he has not previously used, or out of sight. A recent example was finding a plastic bag in a crevice.

Touché

My dog has made the same realization. He's figured out if he knocks something that makes a lot of noise I'll come running to find out what is going on.

One of my cats is a whole another level though. Yesterday I saw he'd figured out that he can hold a Tupperware container between his front paws and then use his teeth to pry the lid off. Jerk!

It could be, but given how complex cat brains are, it probably isn't.

I've seen my cat attempt to plot a route into my home office (which is off limits to him) with his eyes. The last tricky bit is finding a way to get on top of the HVAC piping to jump off to the high (unglassed) window leading into my office. If he can solve that, he's in -- and he knows it.

For anyone who wonders if cats are intelligent, I submit for your consideration Tulie and Sephie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46rROBUDPYI

I was playing with them with a bird wand toy and then I wanted to get back to work. So I wedged the toy's handle in the chair.

Tulie had studied how I operated the toy, and she decided to work it herself to keep Sephie entertained.

At one point the feathers got stuck on the chair, and Tulie figured out how to unstick them!

Then the dogs came by to get some water, and the cats were like "nothing to see here, move along now."

And then with the dogs out of the way, they got back to business.

My calico understands that the laser pointer is the object that causes the red dot to appear, and would paw at it when she would want to play with the red dot.

Cats pay attention and put things together!

I had a cat who would actually pick up the pointer with her mouth and bring it to me when she wanted to play.

The key word in the above three posts might be “she” - my two female cats seem much more intelligent and playful than the male ones. (Perhaps because as adults they have to mother and train kittens, unlike more the solitary males?)

I’m puzzled the above comment is being downvoted. Wild feline species are often social for groups of females, and solitary for males. They’re instinctual rather than (like us) cultural animals - it’s entirely possible that male and female domestic cats exhibit different types of social intelligence and playfulness with respect to each other and to humans, and as I said, my (five!) do.

My most recent one never bothered with that - intuiting when he wished to play and fulfilling the resulting obligation was my job, and it doesn't do to get too indiscriminately familiar with the help - but he did learn not just what the laser pointer was and looked like, but what the tactile switch under its "on" button sounded like. I liked to sneak the dot up on him when I could, but it very soon became a game of "how quietly can I actuate the switch?" versus "how faint a click can he hear?" - a game I rarely won, especially once he further learned to recognize the distinctive rattle of the batteries moving in the laser pointer case! There are probably bombs easier to defuse than it eventually became to retrieve and activate the laser stealthily enough for the dot to come as a surprise - if nothing else, it was a great opportunity to find out how much I've really learned from a lifetime spent mostly in company with cats.

The thing about tact switches, though, is that they all generally sound quite alike, and he was used to not immediately seeing the dot when he heard one. So, through the latter decade or so of this cat's life, it was quite common for the following sequence of events to play out several times a day:

- I adjust the volume on my phone;

- the cat glances excitedly around the floor, then expectantly at me;

- I hold up the phone for him to see;

- the cat and I simultaneously settle back to what we were doing before.

Confused the hell out of a boyfriend one time.

I have an automated feeder for my 2 cats. One has a better time sense than the other and would camp out and devour both bowls when it dispensed.

We got a timer and set it to chime when the feeder went off, which helped.

The feeder has an app that triggers an alert on my phone and now if my phone makes that alert sound, they perk up and bolt to the basement.

So they’ve also learned to associate the alert sound to food….

My dog and both cats still like to play with the laser pointer, but all of them know exactly where it comes from. Thankfully it's just like playing fetch with the dog. Totally repetitive and predictable but still entertaining enough that the pet will keep it up indefinitely.

Please, never use a laser pointer to play with dogs. This can cause anxiety, OCD and ultimately lead to serious harm. A frustrated dog may keep searching for the pointer for weeks after. There is a name for the condition, "laser pointer syndrome". Laser pointers are fine with cats but a big no with dogs.

Heh, my dog has never gotten that wrapped up in laser pointer chasing. She knows it's me, she stops when I say 'Done'. Now, when it comes to chuckit balls on the other hand, she's dangerously close to real OCD.

Tulie does the same thing. I used to keep the laser pointer at the side of my desk mixed in with a pile of USB sticks and such. She would get pretty excited when she saw me reach over there. If I was just grabbing a USB stick she would walk away.

Eventually she started jumping onto that corner of the desk to knock the USB sticks on the floor. After all, if I wasn't going to play laser tag with her, a USB stick makes a mighty fine cat toy!

Interesting that yours is a calico. Tulie is a tortoiseshell, which is basically the same thing without the white background.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortoiseshell_cat

My mother has degree in behavioral biology (though rather old one, she got diploma in 1980, in USSR), and her first job after university was "surgically intrusive experiments to assess learning and intelligence" in cats. She abandoned this work after half a year, because she thinks it was too cruel to animals. Her career was ruined, as in USSR you was unable to easily quit your job in first 3 years after university, you have to work for 3 years on assigned job, to "pay out" your education. As result all her subsequent jobs were low-wage ones, like typist, nurse, and sometimes cleaner or dishwasher. Only after the fall of USSR my father started successful software business (we didn't know word "start-up" till much later) which allows my mother to not work anymore.

But as far as I know, she never regret her decision.

I too have a family member who turned down top research positions in genomics and forensics stateside because it would mean dissecting cats. She never regretted it either.

What is it about this animal that makes it very dear to our hearts?

big eyes & small face:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuteness https://www.bbcearth.com/news/the-code-for-cuteness

Well… squirrels are just rodents with beautiful fluffy tails. We feed squirrels but we kill rodents. Maybe it’s the tail!

As I sit here reading HN and watching two gray squirrels play in my front yard - I think this is very much a "cultural norm" thing, and not inherent.

When I was in high school I did a science fair project that involved mice. Honestly it was mostly because my school tried to discourage us from using live subjects and I felt the need to push the boundaries. One of the hoops I had to jump through was to present the proposal to the IRB at a local community college. One of the IRB's requirements was to define the disposition of the mice after the project was complete. I decided to keep them as pets. Those mice lived an additional three years if memory serves, and they were every bit as suitable as pets as hamsters, reptiles, or similar small animals.

The squirrels in my yard are basically outdoor pets - we regularly have a suet cake hung in their trees, and I made a permanent feeder for them that's kept full year-round. Our squirrels are... rotund. The ones I'm watching now are very young, and are the third generation that have lived on our property since we moved in.

In the fall, I hunt squirrels with my daughters. They're small enough that they're consumed in one or two meals so nothing goes to waste, and they're intelligent enough that they're very difficult to hunt effectively. We don't shoot the ones in our yard, though. Those are pets.

Why do you hunt squirrels with your daughters? Is it a survival thing or do you hunt squirrels for fun?

The lack of self awareness makes animals innocents and it's hard to justify hurting an innocent being.

It’s neotenisation of animals features..especially domesticated animals. Cats are an exception..dogs have eyebrows..cats don’t!..they didn’t have to evolve to look like our young.

We are often protective towards faces that look like our young. It’s hard coded for most creatures. Big eyes, flat side profile and reduction in size of the skulls. Tugging human heart strings means they don’t have to compete for food resources. Domesticated animals also exhibit this with behaviour as well as physical features. Cats..for example.. can be rather aloof ..until they need you. They are absolutely affectionate fur balls.

We don’t play hide and seek..and fetch with adults but we do with children and our pets. They become child substitutes and satisfies a very primal caregiving instinct in humans who may not be able to express it with other humans.

Also..this is why psychopaths start early with torturing and killing animals. It’s an early warning sign to lock these people up and throw the keys away.

Parasites.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii

Note that if you actually read the wikipedia article you linked, more recent studies found that the effects of previous studies are not supported by evidence, and found this with an extremely high P-value.

You're also more likely to get the parasite from handling raw pork than cats, and indoor cats are entirely unaffected.

This parasite makes mice (not humans!) a slightly less averse to light and feline scent, noting more. I don't think we can attribute love for cats to toxoplasma, it is too far-fetched.

I agree. But it’s more than being slightly averse..it makes the mice suicidal. The first time I heard about suicidal rodents and how cats hunt them with their Trojan parasitic poo was on the discover channel..they had set to a night vision camera and recorded the whole thing. I don’t even know if the channel or magazine exists anymore..

I have also seen this in snakes that ‘mesmerize’ mice ..predators know how to paralyze their prey.

But this turned up as more recent and is closer to the Trojan suicide prodding parasite.. https://api.nationalgeographic.com/distribution/public/amp/s...

I have read the full piece but now it’s not accessible without subscription..

[..] A mouse sniffs the air, catches the whiff of cat urine, and runs towards the source of the smell… and straight into the jaws of a cat. This bizarre suicidal streak is the work of a single-celled parasite called Toxoplasma gondii, which has commandeered the mouse’s brain and turned it into a Trojan rodent—a vehicle for sneaking T.gondii into a cat.[..]

[..] T.gondii (or Toxo for short) infects a wide variety of mammals, but it only completes its life cycle in the guts of a cat. To get there, Toxo has ways of subverting the behaviour of dead-end hosts like mice. Its machinations are subtle, so subtle that it’s normally hard to tell an infected mouse from an uninfected one. But the difference becomes obvious when there’s cat pee in the air. Normal mice, even lab-born ones that have never met a cat, have an innate fear of cat smells. Those infected with Toxo do not. They (and their parasites) are more likely to end up in a cat. Toxo also influences the brain of Wendy Ingram from the University of California at Berkeley. She has long been obsessed with the brain and fascinated by Toxo’s dominion over it. “I was struck by the idea that a single celled parasite ‘knows’ more about our brains than we do,” she says. [..]

I currently own the stupidest cat I've ever seen, but I previously had a very clever cat that I got from my in-laws. It could obey commands, figure out patterns, etc.

However, my dog is orders of magnitude smarter, and has taught herself:

- Lying. She barks "at the mailman" about 10 minutes before he arrives, so I'll put her out when he's in the area

- Mirrors. She understands that her reflection is only a reflection, and will look at herself to see if her fur is ruffled on her hindquarters

- Language. Dogs are often taught to communicate with buttons that trigger a word. The conventional wisdom is that it takes a dog about a week to learn to use them. She taught herself 5 separate buttons in 20 minutes, and uses them to this day, chaining them together to express her thoughts remarkably clearly. For example, she used "no" + "time for bed" in the morning when I hadn't refilled her water yet.

But that's why dogs are so popular: they're calibrated to our psyche. They understand human gestures incredibly well.

One of my dogs used to "lie" - he knew he wasn't suppose to be on the sofa. But he'd always push boundaries and try anyway like a human child. As soon as he'd hear you approaching the room, he'd just off (he was a no-fur dog).

What gave away his game was that sometimes his hind leg didn't quite get off the sofa. It was like a kid that took cookies for the cookie jar, even managed to get it back where it was supposed to be but then left obvious crumbs.

I think one of the articles shared here recently mentioned that dogs are the best animal proxy model for understanding mental illness due to their similarity to humans. Dogs' domestication is the oldest by far of any living mammal. I believe that canines and humans had similar basic social structures and that eased their integration. Dogs are basically a humanized species.

There has been some fascinating work on human canine coevolution over the past years - I read a paper (sorry can't locate it now) that claimed that humans developed such distinct pupils due to it being so useful to survival for dogs to be able to see which direction a human is looking, for example in a hunting context. That one blew my mind.

I heard that was so that other humans could see what we were looking at (though dogs may also benefit).

What I did notice was that dog sclerae are more visible than wolf sclerae, and I believe that to be for similar reasons, so a human can read where exactly the dog is looking.

What really blew my mind was learning that the "puppy dog eyes" look was due to extra orbital muscles that dogs have and wolves lack. Dog faces evolved to respond to human sensitivity to facial expressions.

Also the warm spot on the sofa :)

My dog does this too, and it's endearing.

I've seen a lot of cats using those buttons as well, but I don't think dogs or cats are actually expressing language with them.

They understand making a specific sound produces a specific result. It's a bit far from language.

My dog also used "outside" + "water" to express her need to pee. I would be inclined to agree with you if she couldn't use them in the abstract, but she can.

Realizing that making the sounds for "outside" allows you to go outside is not very far from language. I see people saying this every time dog buttons come up and it's very curious to me. What exactly do they need to do, model the parts of a sentence?

language is simply a form of communication between 2 beings. If those buttons are pushed so that a specific outcome may occur through another party (human) I would qualify that as a form of language.

I've had cats all my life due to my parents being cat people. I have the smartest siberian cat that i got from a breeder ( because of my partners allergies).

She goes out and comes back when i call her and understands that she can wander outside only if she comes back when called. I put bells at the door that he uses to tell me when she wants to go out and rings the bells on the otherside when she is ready to come back in. Plays hide and seek, fetch ect with my nephew. And above all i feel like her emotional intelligence is on another level. She knows how to read minds. Best cat I've ever had!!!

I doubt your dog passes the mirror test ...

Things to hate about HN: the large number of nearly-nothing responses like this. I wish people would instead suggest something constructive like 'make some vids and put them on youtube so we can judge for ourselves'.

Or include a link to peer reviewed research. Instead it’s all memes. This one is Will Ferrel as the Anchorman saying “I don’t believe you.”

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/dog-spies/what-do-dogs-... has some references

A good test is to apply a white mark on the subjects head. Try to do it in a way they don't notice, and use a safe material with no odor. Then see if they start mucking with their head after looking in the mirror.

Agreed. If an HN poster doesn't start cleaning their hair after looking in a mirror, their account should be cancelled to prevent further posting. That would work.

(err, that's what you meant, right?)

Well, this dog is white, but I may try some experiments. I'm curious if she could recognize a mark.

That would imply I can believe his very extraordinary claims. No dogs have ever passed the mirror test, this would be a momentous occasion for science.

Given the list of animals that have, or may <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test#Mammals> why would it be so astounding to add a dog to that list?

(NB, I don't know where I saw it but if you look at <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test#Mammals_3> about pigs: "Pigs can use visual information seen in a mirror to find food" - someone recently found dogs doing the same; finding hidden food with mirrors with distinctly better than chance).

Because it would be astounding to add any creature to the list of self aware creatures?

Understanding that a reflection is a reflection isn't full self-awareness, which itself is a blanket term. Being aware of your physical presence doesn't necessitate having a sense of self.

Seeing the reflecton and recognizing what you're seeing is your own reflection (demonstrating this knowledge by fixing your hair, which you notice is ruffled) is basically the full mirror test which is the best test we have for self-recognition.

Well, she's aware it's a reflection of her/not an actual dog. She also can look at me in a mirror while knowing where I am in real life, and it's pretty clear she understands which is real. I'm not sure if she maps her ego onto the reflection like a higher primate could, though.

I thought no dogs could recognize themselves in the mirror. Are you sure?

Also, what breed is your dog? Is it one of the famously clever ones like a Border Collie?

I have a Great Pyrenees, one of the more independent breeds; they're incredibly (annoyingly) smart, but don't test well because they aren't obedient. She definitely understands it's her in the mirror, but I'm not sure about how well she conceptually maps the reflection onto herself.

She did plan an escape for over a week once, but that's a different story...

My cat also seems to understand that his reflection is just a reflection, and ignores it.

He gets spooked when he sees his faint reflection in glass, for example in front of the fake fireplace.

Part of it is that dogs and cats identify each other by smell as much as, if not more than, sight. A reflection may not register as a real dog/cat to most of them.

We have a cat and a border collie, we love them both to the moon and back. That said, me and my SO both agree that our cat is "smarter" than our dog, he (meaning the cat) "invents" games with our dog which the latter very heartily "adopts" but, nevertheless, are not "invented" by him (by the dog).

Also, our dog being a BC that means that, at times, he wants to herd our cat, after long bouts of staring at said cat. In response to all that the cat has invented and performed very smart avoidance techniques that he hadn't use with us before the BC came into our life (the cat was with us first, for about two years).

And that's just two quick things that sprung to my mind on learning the article, there are many others. There's also the misconception of "cats don't love/care about their owners" which is just a stupid stereotype.

My dad suffered a head injury and afterwards, he could just sit, still, spaced out, in one place all day. At night he used to struggle. Our two cats decided to look after him, they used to snuggle him through the day, or harass him to go get food, or to open this door and that door, he used to be kept pretty active by them! At night they used to sleep close to/on him and if he woke they would stick their faces in his and just purr at him. They gave him so much comfort.

After he passed, they now do this with my mum. In the mornings they will wake her up by licking her forehead, ever so gently.

I guess you can read in to their behaviour what you will, but to us it feels like empathy. Not sure what we would do without them.

Non-human emotions are an interesting topic and I’d expect the same perceived behaviour could come up from all sorts of different origins, but, as I have seen my friends (and myself) with mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, and spiders that live with humans and their behaviours, I’m not surprised to conclude they have their own emotions.

When I was in high-school, I had a fish, a Banded knifefish, who welcomed me home every afternoon by standing upright on its tail by whatever side of the aquarium I was. I gave it food at the end of a stick and played games where it would hunt the food. If sometimes, if I stopped moving the stick it’d come to my side of the aquarium and stare at me until the stick started moving again.

That’s an amazing story about the fish. I had no idea. Thanks for sharing.

I strongly suspect predators need to be smarter so they can be more effective.

Either that, or I just had an extremely weird fish.

There was a widespread video of a cat trying to save it's owner from "drowning" in the bathtub

https://youtu.be/Y1GMlXuvdic

    I guess you can read in to their behaviour what you 
    will, but to us it feels like empathy

After 20 years of cat ownership spanning three cats, I felt sure that cats had a very specialized sort of intelligence: they're good at doing predator stuff, and they have also evolved to be good at manipulating humans in a generally benign/symbiotic sort of way.

I felt quite certain "empathy" wasn't part of this set of skills.

But something recently made me question it.

A few weeks ago I saw a video from the Russia/Ukraine war that made me visibly upset. I became distressed and said "no no no NO" and hastily pounded the keyboard to close the window and went into an adjacent room to sit down, actually crying a bit.

My cat became very alarmed and followed me into the other room, looking at my face, and urgently rubbing himself against me.

I'm very close to my animals and I try very hard not to anthropomorphize them. I think it's actually a big disservice to do this. I try very very hard to think about how they experience the world in their own unique ways with their unique, non-human minds.

But this felt utterly unmistakable. He saw that I was upset and comforted me.

And he did this with no real prior data to work with. At least from me. I had never been visibly upset like that around him before.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The real question isn’t how intelligent cats are but whether we’re smart enough to really tell. https://wwnorton.com/books/Are-We-Smart-Enough-to-Know-How-S...

In the days of mini-cassette operating phone answering machines.. We had a cat who liked the sound of peoples voices. It took us a while to figure out what was happening as we'd have missed messages but one day in my tweens when I was home alone but too busy gaming to answer the phone I observed the following:

* Phone ringing, getting on towards 3-4 rings

* Cat sprinting down the stairs, jumps up onto bookshelf and waits

* Cat listens to the machine pick up the caller and the message they leave

* Caller hangs up and the cassettes go all clickety-clack

* Cat then reaches with his paw around the bookshelf to smack the big blue button

* Message plays back again and is now marked read, light goes out, and no one knows we were left a message

Over the years we saw him do this a number of times! Once he hit the wrong button and overwrote the outgoing message with the sound of himself purring.

Cats are master manipulators and if you have been chosen by one (or more) to feed and shelter them according to their desires you will know this. In the hierarchy of your home atop sits the feline.

They generally do what they please when they decide to do so. And they know it. How many people in your household can say they have this unbridled freedom?

Once you realise that the cat(s) in your abode and life have the luxury to pick and choose their course of action, or lack of it, at their whim the more you understand that they rule and occasionally oversee and direct proceedings.

In my house the cat runs the show. Then my wife. Then my two dogs and then me. I'm sure others on here can relate.

Cats also show a form of... empathy? Consideration?

One of my cats wakes me up every day around 5-6AM to get food. She does so by making just enough noise to wake me up, but not my partner (she's doing it on my side of the bed, etc). She also does that when she's not hungry, but her sister is.

Funny, my cat will try to wake me up but when I'm lethargic will start to attack my SO knowing the threat of that will animate me.

That sounds about right. :) I have two very smart cats myself. 16 years old now though, so mostly sleeping. One of them loves snuggling up in my armpit in my office bed, and will get really upset when I don't come at his calling. Burmese can truly get vocal.

Tell me more about this office bed concept.

it’s spelled “keyboard”

Ah, I had a spare bed there that I ended up using increasingly more.. Sorry, not too exciting.

...late, but:

If you're working from home, there's a good chance you're doing so from a spare bedroom, as they're convenient places to double as an office.

If you have a laptop and a split keyboard, all you need to add for a pretty comfortable lying-down workstation is a lap desk with decent clearance.

I found this one worked well during surgery recovery:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B091CB1RDB

One of my cats wakes me up by just barely touching me with a paw.

The other cat - of course, orange one - wakes me by trying to totally destroy something.

My orange boy is an absolute sweetheart except for at 5am when he's hungry. He will sit right by my head and moan like he's dying until I get up. If I don't get up fast enough he'll start pawing at my toes.

We had a wonderful cat when I was a kid, and she definitely showed something like empathy - whenever one of us was sad or hurt, she would come over and rub up against you, making a very particular mewling sound that almost sounded like she was hurt.

I have two cats, one ~3-4 years old, the other nearing 20. The younger one will often fetch me to get milk for the old one.

Absolutely not. Cats do not have a theory of mind.

There is a lot of ‘wild’ left even in domesticated cats compared to dogs. Any animal that still retains the instinct to hunt for survival has to be intelligent. Since the time of pyramids and pharaohs, cats have remained wild and have domesticated the humans.

What we now know as domesticated cats have extra special set of skills..they know how to create and retain memories. They understand reward based stimuli.

There has been enormous research done in the field of cat genetics. UC Davis leads with the cat genetics lab and esp for their work on cat coat genetics.

But we also know what genes changed and evolved for their intelligence as they morphed from feral to domestic.

The most relevant one to intelligence are glutamate receptors that aids learning and memory. Domesticated animals have evolved to developed more coat variations and pigmentations than wild animals. This is why you don’t find a calico tiger but not only are there calico cats, but we also know that their genes guarantee that almost all are also female. Male calicos are sterile and short lived.

It is in the area of cat coat genetics that UC Davis VGL has made enormous strides. There are five key traits that facilitate domestication and one of them is the wide variability in pigmentation/texture of coats.

Even though cats have been around humans, they were allowed to be ‘wild’ and have resisted the intense pressure to adapt for full on domestication.

In a way, they have been more useful in agrarian societies in their undomesticated state and largely due to their hunting instincts…..which once tamed and trained is no longer as effective. Hunting rodents is a far different job that herding docile domesticated sheep.

> Since the time of pyramids and pharaohs, cats have remained wild and have domesticated the humans.

It certainly appears that way. Dignity in domestication. Psychologically, cats seem to have a very healthy sense of self-respect.

[..] Cats, as a class, have never completely got over the snootiness caused by the fact that in Ancient Egypt they were worshipped as gods.[..] - P.G.Wodehouse.

All of my favourite authors are cat slaves.. notably adore their extensive cat quotes..Heinlein, Mark Twain..and of course, P.G.Wodehouse

and not to forget the illustrator of my namesakes..Edward Gorey

And of course, even Spock approved.

Speaking of cat genomics, cats have the interesting property of being the only animal where you can easily read their phenotype from their genotype.

If you look at the base sequences in their DNA you can clearly see whole runs that just spell out “CATCATCATCAT”.

This is true for yeast, fruit fly and humans too!

It's all about the yardstick we use for measuring intelligence, isn't it?

For years, my rescue cat has had an annoying habit of gently plucking at my clothes with her claws for no apparent reason. Then one day I had an epiphany. I discovered that scritching the top of her head made her stop plucking my clothes. Now she gets head scritches whenever she wants.

So from her perspective I am thoroughly stupid, yet capable of learning simple tricks given enough repetition and reinforcement.

They are often intelligent enough to actively resist intelligence tests, unlike too many humans who click through any and all "only some% know this, do you?" marketing/pii-harvesting rubbish.

“We value your privacy! Accept all cookies?”

Or, in the case of Apple: We value your privacy! Here is your AppleID.

Still reading, but this seems counter factual:

“Whereas dogs have been bred for utility, cats have been bred solely for appearance.”

My understanding was cats largely served as pest control from the human perspective. It’s probably why they continue to hunt even when well fed.

I think the point is that when cats were intentionally bred, it was for appearance. The natural selection of feral/domestic non-bred cats took its own course.

Cats have been following people around for millennia whereas “breeding“ is more of a last couple centuries thing. Some breeds do have personality differences like ragdolls. They’re also generally harder to breed because they’re more likely to crossbreed with wild cats-which is how we think we got Maine coons.

+1...but most farmers I've known who did have "barnyard" cats seemed quite aware of which cats were or were not good at vermin control. None of the farmers have (that I've heard) "intentionally bred" barnyard cats. But they may not hesitate to, ah, "strongly influence" which barnyard cats enjoy reproductive success. Sometimes in ways which non-farmers with pet cats might prefer not to hear about.

Maybe that's why cats like to bring dead bodies to their owners. Because cats that do that were noted as good hunters.

I mean, probably not, but wahtever.

That’s their behavior when a kitten needs to learn to hunt and kill. They’re literally saying they’ve never seen you hunt and kill prey so they want you to learn.

It's possible it's both. Natural instinct to bring prey animals for the kitten so it learns might have been adopted to gives proofs to humans that cat serves useful purpose.

We had a cat who would line up his kills in a line on the grass. Very much as a “presentation.”

My wife used to have one day a week when a succession of music students would come to the house. She insists that on that specific day of the week her cats would line the front path with "offerings" for the expected visitors. They had a keen sense of hospitality.

My semi-barn cat would present me with mouse entrails; arranged like an anatomical model. Once he even presented them on a bed of grass like a fancy chef! He had to bring the blades of grass up a cat ramp and through a cat door. I think he'd predict when I would visit so as to have a display ready for me. Once I came early and a lot more mouse was present, but I came back in a bit and it was just entrails.

Although he has been spending a lot of time in the house this winter, and it's been months since I've gotten a present.

Back in the day (~1930), my grandparents had a "semi-pet" rat terrier (a small working dog), and kept a fair number of animals (chickens, a few pigs, cow, etc.). When the rat terrier was feeling ignored/unloved, it would head back to the barn and start hunting rats. Lots of rats. Which were all brought back up to the house (dead), and lined up on the little walk to the kitchen door - for grandma to notice, and happily fuss over the dog for having killed.

When the dog was not feeling insecure/unappreciated, it didn't seem all that interested in hunting rats.

Castration or straight up euthanizing?

Many cat breeds enjoy human companionship much more so than non-pedigree cats. And they're not as scared of everything around them (e.g. Maine Coon).

Anectodal, but I’ve have many cats over the years. The two Maine coons I’ve had (unrelated to each other) were by far the least intelligent in my opinion and observation. All the others have been mixes.

So dogs are tools and cats are art?

art typically appreciates in value while a cat's value is appreciated

Surely not solely for appearance. Cats play pretty well with humans in both senses of the phrase.

You're reading the sentence incorrectly, regarding the order of the focusing adverb, solely. The meaning changes depending on the adverb's placemment. For ex: "bred solely for appearance" does not mean the same as "solely bred for appearance" in the context of the full sentence. [1]

[1] https://www.vocabulary.com/articles/wc/adverb-placement-gene...

Not sure if it is counterfactual.

We know that dogs were definitely bred for utility.

But cats were already effective pest controllers and may simply have moved in with humans after being tolerated.

Cats never needed selective breeding for the jobs they already did; they definitely have been bred for appearance more recently.

Hypothesis: cats have a mental architecture — brain hardware — that's amenable to learning as much as that of any other mammal with a cortex; but they don't come with instinctive knowledge of certain mental schemas — brain Operating System software, essentially — required for social intelligence. Those mental schemas instead have to be taught/communicated.

- Have you ever seen a "cat raised by dogs"? They develop the same mental schemas around socialization that dogs do; begin to understand the sort of "pack" structure and reward norms that dogs think in terms of; and so end up trainable exactly like dogs, using e.g. social-status gratification/reassurance as a substitute for food. And often, you won't actually have to explicitly train a "cat raised by dogs"; cats are seemingly highly skilled at modelling (i.e. witnessing others earning rewards for a behavior, and then self-motivatedly learning to mimic that behavior), and so a cat that hangs around trained dogs may teach themselves "tricks" it observes the dogs doing.

- Have you ever seen a cat taught human language using AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication) devices, a.k.a. "button training"? They can very quickly absorb human mental schemas, learning to not just to favor "using their words" to signal their needs, but also, through that, to begin modelling the world narratively, telling stories about what they witnessed other-person A doing to other-person B. If you communicate the terms "soon" and "later" to them, they will begin asking about the future, expressing a curiosity about whether events (e.g. a person coming home from work) will happen near or far in time. These are not things that cats seem to instinctively think about, until they have the mental schemas to think about them; but once they absorb these schemas, they do engage with these topics!

If me and a cat were thrown into random woods my money would be on the cat surviving for longer period. I think humans are pretty fit in groups, but cats are functional enough to make it on their own.

I think human style intelligence we appreciate so highly is useful mostly in relation to other humans.

Nah, there's an app for that.

cat survival-guide.txt

As opposed to say, "man survival"

Cats are capable of more than they seem. I've spent time around many different dogs and cats (and other critters) when I worked at a vet clinic. I'd say that the cleverest of cats were almost on par with the cleverest of dogs. But the average dog is much more clever than the average cat. Cats also have a lot less interest in problem solving.

There was one cat who lived permanently at the clinic. She would be crated every night before we left. She would often get out of her crate and we'd find her roaming around the clinic the next morning. The cage required that you press two pins towards each other. It's surprising that she figured this out but also that she had the dexterity to reach outside the cage and do this.

She was one of the smartest animals I've ever interacted with. You could see the gears in her head turning when she wanted to figure something out.

That first picture of a kitten in a maze reminded me of my A-level (final year pre-university, for non-UK people) Bio project on animal learning. I used gerbils (too scared to use rats) but I can assure people that whatever the animal, the trick is working how to keep the little bastards in the maze, not how to train them.

Having spent the past three years observing two quite different cats who came into my life via a relationship, I'd say the answer is "eh, a little".

One of them has learnt to do basic tricks for treats, and has also learned to turn on two different robot hoovers by pressing the right button - she only does this late at night, which I take either as attention-seeking or just boredom? The other one is the Zoolander of cats.

Beyond this, they seem quite limited: sleep, eat, wander around, watch the world go by, occasionally hang out with us, sometimes play or hunt.

Why does that make them unintelligent? More like unambitious if you ask me.

That's like looking at your retired grandparents and calling them unambitious for just sleeping and playing golf and eating dinner at 4pm.

A 16 year old cat deserves to do whatever the hellz it wants.

Or a teenager for sleeping and playing videogames. The only difference is time horizon, which you introduced I suppose for the sake of your own argument? No idea how old these cats are.

I had three cats when I was younger, and one of them was one who just turned up one day and decided to move in. He had many funny traits, but the best one was if you put down food he didn't like, he wouldn't just not eat it, he would mime that he was burying it, (like they do their poo), as if he was saying "this is crap" to you. He would look at you as he did this, and then walk off. I don't know if this is what he meant, but I thought it was hilarious.

They are very intelligent at communicating different things to us and at learning through observation.

For instance, my experience is that they can quickly understand the function of a door handle and even learn to operate it in order to open the door.

Literally too long, didnt read entirely. But!

> Other tests include the ability to learn and remember. Is the ability to learn by rote a sign of intelligence? If so, any avian mimic is intelligent.

I would argue this shouldnt just be dismissed like that. I would argue that mimicking is a sign of intelligence - The fact that a toddler can mimic an animal, even if that animal has vastly different anatomy, seems very intelligent. It suggests an understanding of the similarities between function of body parts, even if the form differs significantly. Why would an avian mimic not be a sign of significant intelligence, such as understanding vocalizations and how they happen? A bird rarely has to sit there for hours trying random sounds to mimic another sound, it understand and knows what to do, does it not?

Bird species that mimic tend to be considered the most intelligent ones by other factors as well (corvids, parrots). That dismissal seems quite ignorant.

My family's African Grey mimics telephone sounds, sirens, and human voices and phrases. But he does it mainly to fuck with everyone and will literally laugh after fooling someone. If an animal enjoys messing with another animal, is that a sign of intelligence?

I'm not sure whether liking it is a sign of intelligence, but I'd say that you certainly have to be intelligent to be able to intentionally fool someone this way.

Great article, other comments have already covered my main thoughts

But those sound boards that let pets communicate with words and concatenate have been okay at helping me move past our tests of intelligence. We cant even communicate with other humans that cant dont talk back or use fingers.

I’m also less convinced that human behaviors are not just reward seeking patterns chained together, so I cant dismiss a pet’s use of a sound board as just trained behavior for a treat - at least as a reason to dismiss their intelligence or weigh that action any way at all

I would say its evidence of understanding and that the animal is aware that they cannot use their vocal cords to respond to us and just give up trying that

Ours understood how to open doors by jumping up at the handle and pulling it down. Another could clearly tell we were angry when we frowned.

There is at least one [0] myth that has never had scientific standing or proof stated as factual in that article, so take it with a grain of salt. Several other statements seem iffy to me but I do not know enough those specific subjects to know for sure.

[0] https://sciencenorway.no/ulv/wolf-packs-dont-actually-have-a...

Sarah, OP: What a great summary! I learned a lot from these two long pages.

Appreciate with some reservations this lead:

“I personally consider these experiments cruel and gratuitous (their medical benefit to humans is too often dubious) and though some such experiments are referenced here, Messybeast.com does not support this form of experimentation.”

I understand the political context of starting this way, and as a cat lover it resonates too easily even with me.

But in essentially all western-eastern-northern-southern societies (modern or ancient) that routinely kill and eat such clever beasts as cows, pigs, monkeys, horses, sheep, goats, bunny rabbits, octopi, and all manner of birds, I wonder if “gratuitous and cruel” are the right words. And this wuestion is especially relevant when, as you admit, so much of your cool overview relies on that scientific work. This is cognitive dissonance at its best—-well intentioned but still unrooted. Too “woke” for me.

I would say no: You cannot have this particular cake and eat it too!

And definitely not true the this “gratuitous and cruel” work was either gratuitous and cruel or that it has not contributed greatly to clinical care of humans. It has. Half of what we know (a bit rhetorical) about brain plasticity and repair following brain damage comes from exactly this type of work.

It is intellectually disingenuous to be squeamish, even if a cat lover, if you then use these finding.

And if one is NOT also a strict vegetarian, then please stay silent—-you have no standing in this court of ethical conundrums.

I am firmly convinced that all technology which you (and people who think like you) acquired after making contact with Western Civilization needs to be confiscated from you. Cannibals should have no rights.

I'm reminded of a Feynman story about rats in mazes. Their senses enable them to cue in on a dozen things that human maze-builders miss. So the humans misinterpret what ques they use to solve the puzzles, and publish erroneous conclusions.

More intelligent than anyone gives them credit for. I have a couple I let them roam around outside in my garden where they'll wander through the pathways and stop to sniff every individual fruit, vegetable and flower near the edge, as if they're appreciating my work. Most of the stuff in my garden is flat out inedible to them and poses no threat. They're just enjoying the scenery.

I've been watching Billi off and on. And her vocabulary has increased over the years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_ChDCS_z2o

Her favorite word? Mad.

This cat can communicate not only specific wants, but feelings and abstract concepts such as the passing of time. She also likes to plan her play and cuddles ahead of time and will remind her owner with ”later” if it’s not yet that time.

Counterquestion: how intelligent is Homo Sapiens Sapiens, the self-proclaimed crown of creation?

I was a biology nerd before I became an IT nerd and during my (non scientific) studies I found that many species are way more intelligent than what we give them credit for.

When I studied at university (discontinued, switched to IT) I also found evidence to underline some of my personal findings.

Emo Phillips once said, "I used to think that the brain was the most important organ in my body; until I realized who was telling me that."

Agreed with the article. Also I was slightly disappointed with my cat when I thought her to look into inside the house and meow at something for months as speaking to something that I can't see, only to realize that she was seeing reflection of some birds on a light pole and was talking to them, thinking that they are inside the house.

Most animals are smarter than we give them credit for. What they are lacking in is intellect and the ability to understand events that occur over longer periods or time. For example a cat isn't planning its meals for next week but it's smart as hell when it wants a meal right now.

I think a cat's brain would be a great model for intelligent robots. Pattern recognition is what they do well but their brains are better at detecting moment more than anything for humans it's colours.

My cat knows when it's 9pm since that is treat time. She can be sound asleep but at 8:59pm I hear thump thump as she hops down from her sleeping spot. It's not that she is detecting me doing something. I watch streaming video at random times stopping and starting it. There is no obvious cue that I can think of that is allowing her to know the time. Not even sunlight is a cue since the light is wildly different here due to being on the 49th parallel and the seasons. She even adjusts for daylight savings and standard time but it takes about a week.

"Cat sense" by John Bradshaw is a fascinating read on the nature of cats. Not really on-topic here, but a great read on feline behaviour.

One of our cats waits when my girlfriend and I are at the dinner table, then leans against the table with two legs, touches my GF arm with one of his paws and sometimes emits a meow incredibly similar to what in a local dialect translates to "hey!" which probably he already heard a thousand times from us. That's his way to tell us he wants some of our food, and he doesn't stop until he gets some. Not that it counts as a sign of intelligence, anyway I was able to teach the other cat to shake "hands".

To me the sign that cats are definitely intelligent is their ability to make us think so whether they are or not:).

There is Pavlov's dog study but you never hear about Pavlov's cats...funniest comedy by Eddie Izzard: https://youtu.be/lf9Jy9JQgnY

Anecdote, but I met a random cat on a neighborhood sidewalk in a random town and stopped to love on him for a moment.

When I would walk away, several times he would anticipate my path and run in front of me and lay down to block my path, apparently to receive some more affection.

I’ve had some super affectionate and at least not-dumb cats, but I was still really surprised by this guy’s apparent intentionality. And all for affection - it’s not like I’d had any cat treats on me to give him.

My cat tells me when she wants to play. She will scratch a specific spot on our engineered wood floor where the top layer is flaking off. As I have no desire to replace a piece of flooring in the middle of the room, this action gets an near instant toss of whatever toy is nearby.

Interesting that female cats form more social, cooperative groups. I wonder if this explains why our female cat seems more sociable and human while our male cat is more aloof.

I don't know about Intelligent but I had a cat that was bringing me mice every so often in the morning and was knocking the door for like 10 minutes with her back leg!

The first time I got scared cause I didn't want the mouse to get in the house and I didn't know who was knocking on the door but I think it was half-dead...oh yeah I forgot to mention that all the mice were still alive.

I'll never understand that behavior..she was well fed.

Some say it is their way of showing appreciation.

My mom's cat did not do anything super smart but she made me feel dumb.

She would walk over and start talking - almost literally. Her trills and mews vere so varied in pitch and length that it sounded like speech. And she responded when we talked to her.

This made me feel dumb, because I obviously couldn't understand what she'd talk about. Well except that one time she detected a leak in the central heating and alerted me to it.

Cats are oriented towards hunting and killing. In that regard they are seriously intelligent.

Anything else they are not very intelligent. Let’s not make cat videos confuse us.

how can we measure other species intelligence when we can't ours... we can't and we shouldn't, every test which states it measures intelligence is dysfunctional... Loved it... http://messybeast.com/intelligence.htm#:~:text=Humans%20ofte...

One of the major problems is that we haven't broken down IQ into its actual basis. Working memory and reaction speed are two psychometrics highly correlated to IQ. But someone can easily be gifted in one but not the other. A conventional IQ test would not recognize this.

My cat jumps up to pull down on the handle of closed doors that she wants to open, then pulls the slightly open door with her paw so she can go through. When the front door is locked she finds which room I am in and scratches at the door (I keep the doors closed) until I come, then encourages me to follow her to the front door so that I can unlock it for her.

I've seen those instagram/tiktok(?) videos where a cat owner will put some kind of weird face filter, and the cat will slowly look up at its owner in shock/disgust/curiosity.

It convinced me that cats are aware of themselves as reflections on a camera or mirror and are much smarter than I thought. To realise something was wrong with their owners face.

> DATA ANALYSIS Two cats (1 male neutered, 6 years old, 1 female neutered 2 years old) hid during the entire test and this data was not included

ahahahahhaha this one from another part of the site is great. Love the content, love the '90s hypersimple design. I gave her a donation and she quickly sent me back a personal note.

We provide them with food, shelter, toys, medical care, etc. and they provide us with indifference. Seems pretty smart to me.

I moderate /r/adventurecats, which focuses on leash training of house cats.

I started leash training my cat at about 6 months and he is 4.5 years old now.

People are regularly astonished to see a cat content on a leash at all.

But what’s amazing is how much preference, analysis, and decision making you see a cat demonstrate when you spend so much time with them.

I've read, that theory about "alpha male with alpha female in wolf pack" is disproved, as this behavior is seen only in captivity.

Also, claim that cats are breed only for appearance is not completely true, in villages good rat-catchers will breed and not-so-good rat-catchers will have their litters drown.

> Whereas dogs have been bred for utility, cats have been bred solely for appearance.

This strikes me as a dubious statement. Or perhaps I am reading more into it than is really there. Perhaps it was true a hundred or more years ago, but now it seems to me that dogs are overwhelmingly bred for appearance.

I’m amazed by my cat’s stalking instincts. I play hide and seek with her indoors and she will outflank me more than I can outflank her majority of the time. When I think I have the surprise on her she’ll be behind and I’m sure thinking to herself how easy this human is.

In the middle of the night, my cat will sometimes open the bathroom towel cabinet. Couldn't understand why until I realized it's a couple feet from the garage door on same wall, and he's actually attempting to go in garage to use the litter box.

My cat is the smarter cat ever. It managed to train me very well.

Smart enough to get you to feed it if you own one...

"own"...

In Russia, cat "own" you.

I often think intelligence is an anthropo-centered definition, and even then, intelligence is often badly defined for mathematics.

Getting an HTTPS error in Firefox:

https://archive.ph/Mbufh

On the side, what I love about this page is that there is no styling, no share this, no comments, no cookie banners or similar "paywalls", no other distractions. Just content.

It's so refreshing.

Just in time for Caturday

Can anyone give me a TLDR of this? I think it is saying that "Just cause cats don't act like humans doesn't mean they aren't smart" but its very long and doesn't have a decent summary so I am not sure.

Yes

Depends on who you ask.

In some intelligence circles cats are referred to as "St. Up ID" aka "St. Uppity" because they always like to show your their asses ... almost as if they're begging for some sort of trophy or something.

On the other hand ... over time, cats have developed mice/Rat & human mind-altering poop:

https://www.nbcnews.com/healthmain/cat-poop-parasite-control...

... leading to incidents such as:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQ4Y27RQaZk <== notice none of the cats manage to "eat The Rat" aka The Emperor: https://www.trendstees.com/product/emperor-pikachu-t-shirt/ ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bhDAJUk-vU

https://quinzo.wordpress.com/2011/12/01/shocking-german-bish...

Same video (shorter), with Russian comment-a-Ri: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPK_ij0llc8 ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTt4k3lh9Gc

Here is another famous scene from Belgium: https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/cat-instant-karm...

So basically, cats poop, Ratz eats the SH!I.T. code, becomes fearless, cat attacks what it assumes is free food and learns a lesson:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uSfLDuRtOM

https://theintercept.com/2016/11/16/the-nsas-spy-hub-in-new-...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZulOGB9yXlY <== starts off with "cocaine"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Bv4KGhtFt4 <== Cocaine Marley fought with the Crips because she got jumped in; she's "Big Blue" ... has "Lincoln Tunnel-vision" and "rolls like a marble" ...

Early example of a PHD candidate's example of Ai: https://www.macintoshrepository.org/6008-sumo ... https://tenor.com/view/obviously-defective-tomax-xamot-gi-jo... ... unless you keep insisting on playing it ... then it gets harder exponentially quickly at the later levels ...

At "2:48" is the NSA/Se Cutey Ri's opinion of MSM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXKOIKBCC8c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dS4RpBR0Zn0 https://giphy.com/gifs/IntoAction-eH4H6NP5XePcxnO6wU

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/oct/14/freedomofinfor...

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/fbi-reveals-its-suspicion...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Bortnikov#:~:text=Al....

http://thealexandernj.net/ Front view:

https://tenor.com/view/voltron-linkup-gettogether-gif-561031...

aka "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFN3l2NuoE0"

Top view from outer space: https://www.amazon.com/Lolita-Jeremy-Irons/dp/B00001IVFG

This is a random scene from the film: https://voltamagazine.wordpress.com/2020/11/02/decoding-the-...

This is a bizarre random movie theater closing of a place that had some great reviews on Yelp ... yet closed for "undisclosed business circumstances":

https://www.google.com/search?q=edgewater+multiplex+closing&...

https://www.pcgamesn.com/the-outer-worlds/the-outer-worlds-c...

It had great cheap ticket rates and even cheaper matinee rates ...

Unfortunately, messing around with the National "Se Cuty Ri" Agency is a very expensive proposition:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPn82XZgTMA

https://tenor.com/view/super-milk-chan-anime-adult-swim-gif-...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQW2FFt3-A8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGQvlx4LDqg

https://tenor.com/view/i-got-a-solution-idiocracy-solution-t...

https://www.google.com/search?q=donald+rumsfeld+smile&tbm=is...

This is what Donald Rumsfeld was trying to give endless clues about what "Pentagon" is a "Ran MAGA/Anagram/Spell-s-witch" about (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-9169611/Rihann...):

https://www.yahoo.com/video/pentagon-35-trillion-accounting-...

https://tenor.com/view/destro-marvel-animated-such-bottomles...

I mean this in the kindest possible way: take your antipsychotics.

Tldr?

I had my cat read it to me.

How intelligent are cats? Intelligent enough to be the subject of a very long article about feline intelligence which I also did not read in full due to it's excessive length!

Cats and dogs can be roughly assessed as being about the same in intelligence but vary strongly in trainability due to their different motivations. Dogs gain advantage by pack living, cats by loose association. Pack living offers a better platform for coordination and training hence dogs are more motivated to learn tricks.

In the past this trainability was associated with intelligence but modern studies indicate trainability and intelligence are not correlated as closely as we used to think.

In short: you train a dog, your cat trains you aka the old joke about dogs having masters and cats having staff is probably true.

Thanks, I appreciate it.

Nice summary. I skimmed the entire article, and it appears to be mainly about explaining why the traditional consensus that cats are less intelligent than dogs would be biased.

"Because we judge intelligence by comparing other creatures to ourselves, many popular accounts of cat behaviour describe learning as though cats are mentally defective humans rather than highly specialised carnivores."

I wish it had pointed out cats also have fast twitch muscles. Their actions are constrained by this. They thus aren’t going to rush through a maze on a whim or for the chance at a treat.

My personal pet theory is that cats are the only animals ever to domesticate humans.

Agree. That’s how I introduce my cat to his doctors or boarders “he’s trained me very well.”

that's funny, but considering the many ways in which humans have mistreated them over the centuries I don't think they really benefited all that much from the relationship https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/ritualistic-cat-tortur...

That's just the tip of the iceberg. Cats are often used in gory neurology research. The research is unnecessary and wasteful, most of it just grant-farming. [1]

https://www.peta.org/features/uw-madison-cruelty/

“I am the Cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me. I will not come.”

I must read the Just So Stories again. Thirty years ago I used to read them to my eldest son when he went to bed.

most of them are very good.

"How the whale got his throat" is still the house favorite, but as an adult, man, did i laugh a lot harder at "the butterfly that stamped".

I thought the pack dominance hierarchy concept for wolves, that the article mentions, was observed to be a myth?[1]

Wolf packs are generally a monogamous pair with their recent offspring.

And feral cats certainly form colonies, though it seems like what research there is has the primary cat social groups being a female and her young and extending from there to multiple females and their young.[2]

Really for both wolves/dogs and cats it seems like environment strongly influences social behavior and there is a large amount of variance.

[1] https://phys.org/news/2021-04-wolf-dont-alpha-males-females.... [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7149619/

"Pack living offers a better platform for coordination and training hence dogs are more motivated to learn tricks" does not require a strict dominance hierarchy as was once erroneously thought to exist.

> Wolf packs are generally a monogamous pair with their recent offspring.

Larger packs have been observed in Yellowstone. I think it’s largely a function of prey density. In a case where family packs merge into a larger pack I imagine somehow the animals work out who the leader is as a necessary condition for cooperation.

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