Cats learn the names of their friend cats in their daily lives
nature.com
nature.com
1. "Let's go" - morning meal
2. "Upstairs" - I am going to bed
3. "Dinner" (plus clink bowls together) - evening meal
4. "Lie Down"
and their names.
Emerald, who prefers being upstairs, definitely responds to "Upstairs": she charges upstairs when I say it. Jade remains enigmatic and skeptical: that seems to be her nature. But if she is in the mood for a tummy rub, she will respond to "Lie Down".
For me, the great charm of cats is that it is impossible to tell the difference between "No, I don't understand you." and "I understand you perfectly well, but I plan to ignore you completely until I feel like responding".
They wont look at you because its not their primary way of “seeing” or spatializing the world or their etiquette
Their ears might briefly move in your direction, their tail might flick in one of their frustrating ways, they might not move a muscle (which is a conscious response for them as well)
our current cats are less responsive, maybe cause there's two of them, so they have more cat-like comm.
I love the way you put that.
Whenever my office door opens and the cat walks in, she's either there for a visit or to collect me, in which case she waits by the door to lead me to her dish, her toys, or whatever she has in mind. Beyond communicating with humans, cats are pretty good at training them, too.
Mum has a cat who has this particular (and peculiar) habit of drinking from the faucet whenever he's had treats.
It's pretty hilarious how well he's trained the humans. Whenever he's had a treat, he'll walk toward the bathroom and flick his tail, ears turned back, expectantly waiting for someone to follow. If no one follows, he'll continue on his way and jump up on the counter top. If he still hasn't collected anyone's attention, he'll emit a distinctive (and very squeaky!) meow that he uses for no other purpose than "I want a drink" and will do so periodically until someone comes to turn the faucet on. Otherwise he'll lay there until he's noticed (if not, he'll give up and finally go to one of the water bowls).
He's also finicky about the flow rate. If it's turned up too high (he prefers a gentle stream—almost a dribble) he'll stare at you until the flow rate is corrected.
Talk about training his humans indeed!
Incidentally, this is why I dislike cats so much and prefer dogs :)
https://youtu.be/6DZVnX8bEAs?t=68
(If you've never seen the movie, it's worth a watch!)
Started off that we kept food in there. So of course he would try and get in. This lead to him being fed when was trying to get in. So now it’s a signal.
We have been well trained
They definitely aren't, though, at least not all of them. My guy used to fight like hell any time I tried to trim his claws, so eventually I gave it up and let him look after himself, thinking, well, he's a cat and he's got plenty of carpet to scratch, he'll do fine. That lasted till he got an ingrown claw, so I had to trim that back, debride and disinfect the wound it'd made in his pad, then trim enough fur on his foreleg short enough to get a bandage to stick where he couldn't shake it off.
He really hated that, for all that it only took a couple of days to heal - they're better at that than even we are, and in a week you couldn't tell except by the missing fur that anything had ever happened. Well, by that and one other thing: for the balance of his life, when I went to trim his claws, he never put up much more than a token struggle. Where before he'd fight his way to the top of my head and leap clear, this was just enough of a fuss to make sure nobody thought him a coward, and no more - he'd learned it was worth letting me look after him a little, so he didn't need me to look after him a lot.
Yep, I think that's the answer! The cat discovered the dog clicker!
> between "No, I don't understand you." and "I understand you perfectly well, but [nothing in my nature compels me to care]".
This is where he and I are for lots of other stuff, and I also love him for it.
- ask kiddo to do something, get a "no" or "I'm busy."
- I say "I don't want to have to count." Continued resistance 30% of the time.
- If resistance then counting starts. Compliance comes earlier or later in the counting 95% of the time.
If counting finishes then guaranteed tears also has a plan because wife and I have time to see it coming too.
Its been shown in the past (not got the links to hand, and cba to google right now, but I'm sure they wont be hard to find) that cats know their name, its just often they don't give a shit when you call them. Which pretty much any cat servant will understand. Wouldn't be surprised that also applies to other words/commands.
EDIT: My own cat knows her name, but will ignore me unless she wants attension, sleep or bird watching is far too important to go and see what I want.
EDIT2: Fucking Typos!!!
Of course they have agency and their own goals. It's fascinating that humans are surprised and sometimes baffled by this.
The others he just ignores me.
It’s totally the same thing with retired racer greyhounds. Gentle, stoic, sleep 20 hours a day, and literally zero eagerness to please. They’re the most catlike of dog breeds.
We had a rescue when I was little, a beautiful dog named Anubis. She wasn't too bright, but that was okay; she had a pal, an Eskimo dog called Raven, who was smart enough for the both of them and had a sense of humor to match - not but a foot high but she could jump up from a standing start and lick my face, and often did. Even on the worst day of my life, Raven could still get me to smile.
Anubis hadn't been a winner on the track but she loved nothing more than to run, and Raven knew it. Every so often, not more than once a month or so, Raven would pick a spot at the edge of the backyard fence. There she'd dig a hole bigger than she needed, because the hole wasn't for her; it was for Anubis, who'd wriggle through and promptly light out for the horizon. Meanwhile Raven amused herself and kept us busy with fruitless attempts to catch her. She'd run straight at me till I crouched down and committed to the lunge, and then she'd dodge on a dime and turn laughing to watch me faceplant in the dirt - cats might not laugh but dogs sure do, and Raven was the laughingest dog I ever did know.
This'd keep up till Anubis had done stretching her legs, and trotted back to press her muzzle into Mom's hand by way of genuine contrition. You could see she felt bad about it, but only to the extent she knew Mom didn't like it, if only because we were concerned with the day's occasions and she worried Anubis would get hit by a truck, which was a real concern on the gravel roads around where we lived then. Hell, Mom and I spent enough time ourselves tooling around those back roads with a six-pack in a foam cooler on the bench seat between us, her getting through a couple-three cans of Bud Light while she taught me how to drive and how to know every bird we saw without most times needing to pick up the Audubon next to the cooler. But just a few beers, barely enough to get buzzed, and most of the folks around there were a fair bit less restrained than Mom - less likely to worry about whether or not they might hit a deer on the road, more so to put a .308 through it, this being close enough to roadkill to keep the fish & game wardens sweet. So I can't blame Mom worrying, but Anubis must've either kept mostly to the woods or else just led a charmed life; occasional fleas notwithstanding, she never came to the least bit of harm.
As for the running itself, Mom understood that was just what Anubis had to do every now and again, but when she came back you could see she'd rather have found a way that wouldn't put Mom out. In any case, only once she saw Anubis was satisfied would Raven let me "catch" her, mainly so she could lick my face and I'd scratch behind her ears - it wasn't that I couldn't stay mad; it was that she was the kind of dog that you couldn't get mad in the first place. Both of them were.
Mom kept Rottweilers later - as pets, not for any other reason - and those were good dogs too, smart and kind and loving, but Anubis and Raven were special. God, I loved those dogs. Every kid should be so lucky.
Mine gets treats at 9pm and she knows almost exactly when it's 9pm maybe a 1 minute deviation. This is without an external cues. She sits there waiting for me if I forget.
The cat is able to do the following:
- sit
- spin (rotate in a circle)
- "up up" to stand on their feet, tapping my finger with the paws
- "high five" and "low five"
- "platz" to lay down on all fours
- "come on" to follow around
- "nom nom" to signal whether or not it wants food. You can see the eyes getting big immediately when it's very hungry.
- whistling to come to a specific spot
- double tap on a surface to signal to come to a specific spot
There's a theory that cats that don't scream but make the "urrr"ing sounds don't treat their owners like a kitten but as a mutually respected individual. And most people think that cats try to make the "urrr" sounds to communicate with humans.
These sounds vary in pitch and repetition and length and it's very easy to identify what our cat wants from us:
- when it doesn't like something
- when it wants to play hide and seek
- when it wants to go outside
- when it wants us to help it get to a specific spot (e.g. opening the door or making a fort on the bed so it can hide under the sheets).
- when it wants to cuddle
- when it wants to be hold in the arms so it can see what we're doing (on the kitchen counter, where it isn't allowed to jump on)
- and, of course, when it is hungry, that's the high pitch scream most cats do.
What I also wanted to add is that our cat has different moods of cooperating with the tricks it has to do when getting food. When it's only slightly hungry it tries to get away with cuddling us or "pushing" the head to the hand while purring...whereas when it's really really hungry it immediately does the tricks to get it over with.
I guess that cats are intelligent enough for tricks but they are also easily bored, that's why you have to change tricks to keep their brains busy and healthy.
A second distinct meow he makes is when he is able to sneak past the baby gate to run down the stairs to the front door -- I call this his "see ya, sucker" meow.
A couple times I did the morning food routine while brushing my teeth (when I was in a hurry) and I was only humming the words while my cat was perfectly able to understand what I want from it.
But! Watch him navigate the minefield of my desk as he's going to get a sip of water and you'll realize that he absolutely knows exactly where each paw is going with extreme precision on each step. The effortless "oops did I just step on your hand so you'll notice me?" is anything but an oops :)
https://www.tiktok.com/@danil_chernyy/video/7096930280765721...
Something to keep in mind is that cats have a very broad but different hearing range from humans. Their central frequency range of hearing overlaps with human speech but doesn't entirely cover it on the low end. So if your voice is low, you might need to raise your pitch a bit to help the cat recognize it as vocalization or differentiate it.
And they also don't really naturally communicate with vocalizations (unlike dogs, I believe); cat to cat communication is through other means. They literally learned to meow to talk to us because we don't understand their communication methods (sometimes, but not always, because we lack the senses to do so). So I think that's something to keep in mind if you feel like your cat is being obtuse: they're literally working pretty hard to make you understand them, actually.
So like, it's not that surprising that sometimes they just don't want to put in the effort. You'd probably feel the same way.
These cats do a thing where they get inches from each other's faces and make a very loud, very long moaning sound. I imagine it's something in the local gene pool (my neighbor has been feeding strays for over a decade, I hate it)
If you say summon him he'll probably ignore you but if he's interested he'll whimper errrderrruuderr softly while walking toward you.
Then there's, MOWLLLLL MOWLLLLL, slowly howling, that sometimes means he's sick and gunna throw up. Usually right on both the rug and the carpet.
Then there's, MAHHH MAHHH, just two in quick succession, which literally sounds like mama. That's the I want something one, generally he wants catnip from the outside plant.
Just heard him go MOOOOW MUUUROWLLL MUUUROWLLL howling, but he's just pacing back and forth from the window and now wimpering at me. So I assume he's misses mama (the wife).
The funniest is and most unique is, BRRRRAHDAHDOP, which he yells before tearing full speed through the house or down the hallway for seemingly no reason. I think that's either "Look at me" or he's so excited he can't contain himself and it slips out naturally.
Side note: this was an interesting challenge creating and optimizing these onomatopoeias
He's sweetest when he wakes up, so it turns into more of a coo than whimper since he's purring a bit.
Seems to be his hello/greeting call.
One of my cats also does this. It's a very distinct vocalization that I only ever hear when I've stayed up too late and seems to mean "Why aren't you in bed already?" If I hear that, I know I've stayed up too long. (And usually, she seems to mainly want me to get into bed so that she can curl up and go to sleep by my feet or on my legs.)
He'd tuck the top of his head under my own chin, and the tip of his tail would just reach my knees. I'm five foot ten - mongrel tabby or no, he was a big cat.
This made me remember a funny meme about dogs and cats.
"A dog is able to learn up to 250 words and tricks and gestures. A dog can count up to 5 and perform simple math. Equivalent human age: 3. A cat doesn't give a fuck and is sick of your shit. Equivalent human age: 42"
One cat completed only the first trial before escaping from the room and climbing out of reach."
I quite enjoyed this bit.
Anecdotally I can confirm that my cats know each others names, not sure if they would recognize on a monitor though.
The other cat is not so bright, if you ever say anything to him directly he'll only meow back and come over for a pat, that's it. It's just a back and forth screaming match if you talk to him. The chopsyest cat I've ever met. Just shouts at everyone and everything without purpose.
I think what I'm trying to say is, cats have a range of intelligence and some of them are quite good at learning names.
That's not to say anyone who has had a trainable cat doesn't like them - mine have their moments - but I think it's worthwhile to consider that.
https://lithub.com/house-cats-and-wild-cats-arent-actually-t...
https://www.reddit.com/r/Backcountry/comments/ul61y6/snow_ra...
More pats for less work? Sounds like the smarter one to me.
Two things stick out at me:
1) Cats really do respond to being talked to and interacted with. Cats that are talked to often get more responsive and communicative.
2) There is huge genetic IQ gaps, lol. Some cats are so smart they blow your mind, others are mouth breathers. The normal distribution is real.
Same rules apply to humans as well. Interaction early on develops personality and intelligence varies genetically by a wide margin.
Personally, it's pretty easy over time to tell the difference between apathy and intelligence when you spend a lot of time observing interactions.
"People like you" should check your tone btw.
Maybe you do. Behaviorism went out with disco and bell bottoms, and good riddance; more recent researchers often take an ethological approach - Goodall, not that pervo freak Skinner - and what we've learned from corvids only scratches the surface of the extent to which we're lately discovering that animals other than humans are a lot smarter than we tend to give them credit for.
The human animal, on the other hand - well, that you put quotes around "mind" in your comment earlier suffices alone to demonstrate that your confident assumption of knowing what you're talking about here lacks quite a bit for congruence with reality. Hell, I've met crows who proved to have a very accurate theory of mind for me - much more so than you here give the impression of having for them.
I'm very curious about how well someone with a "lot of experience in digital advertising" is positioned to define "genetic IQ gaps", "smart", etc. as it applies to cats & others. Perhaps instead of throwing these terms around like they're candy, you should submit your findings to an scientific journal (and get rejected :) ).
GP isn't trying to write a paper, he's stating an observation based on his experience with the animals he's had.
Feel free to dispute the above statements with research or anecdotes, but solely insulting people and getting angry just reflects poorly on you.
I can only assume you are one of those stupid cats seeing how you handled yourself in this thread :)
This cat didn't make any noise (meow) at all, if she wanted to go out, etc.,
she would run between you legs, (yes, totally under-foot!) a major trip hazard.
I taught her how to vocalize very quickly, which she understood we would hear, and would respond too.
A cat with deaf human parents would have never learned this, or would have learned that meowing doesn't work and to try something else.
They almost all independently chose to pick the signature one we associate with cats, just for us
Our cat manages to make a noise that sounds like a young child screaming "mum" - it really upsets my wife.
It's also worth noting that kittens and their mothers communicate heavily via meows even when no humans are present. Food-begging is a pretty straightforward association from there.
You're right that meows are by default how cats talk with their kittens. They also bring kittens dead or nearly dead prey, as the first step in teaching them how to hunt. That they choose to use the same idioms with us I think constitutes an eloquent comment on how clever they find us.
When I'm working from my desk at home, she often crash lands in my lap and then rolls over, all four paws fully stretched as the ultimate invitation for a belly rub. This blocks my arms from doing work, but she doesn't care.
Next, I turn on Enya, the exact same playlist every single time. The moment the music starts she starts cycling her front paws with her eyes closed, as if riding an invisible bicycle upside down.
I need to fully enclose her with both arms to not drop her and I love the arrogance in making that my problem, not hers.
I don't know why it's Enya. It could be that it was playing the first time this happened, creating a positive memory association. Or maybe she just likes the sounds. In any case, no paw cycling without Enya. When I pause the song she immediately stops, opens her eyes and stares at me in digust, which is cat for: put it back on, idiot.
The alternative explanation being, of course, that very few cats care. And, really, in these circumstances, why should they? But the boxplots demonstrate that the effect here is marginal.
With two of our younger (4yo sibling tabby) cats it seemed to “translate” their infrequent meows as “I love you” “I want to play”, so kind of, yea, probably, not impressive.
But for our third cat, (an elderly female cross somewhere between Maine coon, silver tabby and sofa, a 22 pound ball of complaints) the app suggestions were often along the lines of “I don’t feel well”, “I’m in pain”. She does have arthritis (and is under vet care) so that response from the app was seemingly reasonable.
It does kinda make sense, I have 2 cats (from the same litter and have been together their entire lives. 14 yo now). They each clearly respond to their name and not their brothers name. Or at least respond differently, but I have noticed they look up sometimes if I call one and not the other (but won't run up to me). I have long though it was them responding to the "pet voice" that we all seem to use. But if this was the case that explains it better.
So there has to be some understanding there of... something. I am curious what they internalize it as.
On the flip side I have to wonder. I live alone. My cats have very rarely actually heard my name. I would be very surprised if they had any concept of what my name was. But if they don't, do they think something different. It is interesting.
So that would make sense in a way. And does lead to some... funny thoughts on what they may think my name is.
Where I have to wonder if for a cat, I could train them to have a sound I play on their phone to be their name for all they care (kinda going back to them possibly thinking a ringtone could be my name). It's still just a sound that they are responding to not a word.
Maybe like you said though, the difference doesn't matter. Maybe even as humans while we understand that a name is language it is still something else entirely? I don't know, that is a realm of cognitive study I know nothing about. But it is fascinating.
Reminds me of the classic Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry sketch "Your name, sir?": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNoS2BU6bbQ
We think that she must have heard and understood when my parents talked about upcoming visits, but it's always hard to tell with cats. Maybe she was picking up on emotions instead of words, or maybe she was psychic.
1 - https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/comments/uq5yjo/animal...
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/6d/36/fa/6d36fa7cc9d762952a62...
The speed at which the dog figured out the cats names was incredible. You say the friendly cat's name and he would look up with mild interest. When he's fast asleep you could say the shy cat's name and he would bounce up going, "Where? Where? Where?"
We were always told that no one really owns a cat, but we should take care of them all because it's good luck.
(Though what I heard about is not drowning, but slamming them hard to something :/)
I didn't use the "pet voice" with him, either. Dogs, sure, but generally when I have something to say to a cat I say it like I would to a human, and that seems to mostly work okay.
That said, I find as with dogs that cats respond more to pitch than to content; I'm not sure their theory of mind for us extends far enough to recognizing that we also have language, but they certainly do learn some of the sounds we make.
When I needed him to come find me, I'd whistle just above the highest pitch I could hear, and he came running because I'd taken care to associate that sound with treats in his kittenhood. As his hearing range contracted in his dotage, I switched to the more usual "pspspsps" sort of sound, which worked about as well.
Granted, I grew up with cats, and my mom was of a mind that the best way for me to learn their style of manners was to let them teach me directly. This worked well enough that it's long since ceased to be a surprise when someone says something like "but our cat doesn't like anybody!" So I don't know how well my experience is likely to generalize.
The slow blink while looking into their eyes means "it's cool, we're cool"
I taught our cats to recognize a double-tap on the butt as "get up, I gotta get up"
gotta read their body language... and yeah, sometimes it DOES say "I'm not currently interested, no offense"... but the thing to know is, they also read YOUR body language. They might not understand too many words, but intonation matters, posture matters, movement matters
random cat trivia: They can't taste sweet tastes at all because a crucial gene for it got knocked out by a mutation a long time ago
My guy never quite got the hang of the temperature control, always cooked the hell out of my tips. (That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it...) But I do have to give him that his joints were usually better than mine.
The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn’t just one of your holiday games;
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there’s the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo, or James,
All of them sensible everyday names.
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
But all of them sensible everyday names,
A name that’s peculiar, and more dignified,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?
Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Names that never belong to more than one cat.
And that is the name that you never will guess;
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Such amazing creatures.
In my almost-50 years I think I've only met "cats with cat friends" a handful of times. Even when we had a pair of sibling cats that "liked" each other, when one of them died the other actually seemed "happier" after, which is kind of sad and dark.
I know such friend relationships can exist with them, I just rarely have seen it.
But cats are social animals and will absolutely bond with each other. Even cats not from the same litter will bond with other cats. Usually it takes a careful and patient introduction, which people don't realize. All they'll do is put the two cats in the same room, observe them fight, and come to the conclusion that their cat just wants to be alone. But that probably isn't the case at all.
Cats being "solitary" animals is largely a misunderstanding of cat behavior towards humans due to cat affection being expressed differently than dog affection.
I hate when the idea that cats can't bond, isn't loving, all of the stereotypes of cats are thrown around. Because they are just wrong.
I do think a fair amount of it is not knowing how to properly socialize a kitten. But even a socialized cat will never be as affectionate as a dog. Or at least not the way a dog shows it.
But I have 2 cats, they will sometimes sleep in different rooms and sometimes cuddle up basically on top of each other. They almost every night will sleep in my bed or at the very least will sleep on the cat tree next to me.
I have noticed that when I have had to take one of my cats for an extended stay at the vet the other is noticeably... different. I don't want to assign an emotion since their emotions are different. But he is not himself. This often starts when I put one cat in a carrier.
They seem to know when I am in a mood and really need that affection.
But I also acknowledge that a cat isn't for everyone. Some people need that constant unquestionable affection that a dog gives you. Cats are more subtle.
I know some people accomplish this, but it honestly seems like the exception rather than the rule.
(EDIT: I should mention that our cat came from a shelter where she lived with a pile of other kittens. But her response to other cats now is... GTFO here)
The approach we took was to keep the new cat in a separate room for the first few days to allow them to begin to get used to the new scent. We would then swap blankets to give them further time to get used to each other's scents. Then we'd open the door and allow them to interact under supervision for short periods and then we gradually increased the time they could interact each day.
I'm not sure this would work if you had outdoor cats. We didn't actually intend to get the third cat, but we ended up taking him in as our friend's original cat refused to acclimate to the point that he was spending all but 20 mins a day outside of the house and so they needed a good home for their new cat.
Yep.
> It took around a month for both the second and third cat to be completely accepted.
Oh boy that's nothing. I think we were like 10 months. They still don't get along flawlessly but it is now tolerable. We did precisely the recommended steps (scent swapping, separate spaces, associating each other with food, play nearby each other).
It's probably true for a lot of other animals as well.
What I wish people told us was that sometimes it isn't enough to do everything right. We planned everything and did as much as we possibly could to socialize them effectively and it ended up only fine after a lot of struggle. I had always figured that people who had cats who hated each other simply didn't follow the best practices when introducing them to each other. But that's clearly not the case.
Cat colonies, as I understand, tend to follow the the eighth rule of Fight Club, which can make introductions seem unsuccessful even when they may not be.
It's also a great way to pick a few cats to bring home. My local shelter will just let you into the room, and you can hang out and decide which ones (and how many) you'll bring home.
She's such a mellow "no f's given" cat. Lives in a house with two border collies and doesn't take any crap from them and lies around totally chill all day long. I suspect this might be due to her socialization at the animal shelter.
Is that why my cat dropped a dead vole on our doorstep last week? Is she sad that we're deprived of such essentials? :-)
Much of the myth that cats are naturally solitary creatures comes from people studying the behaviors of the European wildcat and attributing them to housecats, which is wrong because that's not what housecats are descended from.
Yup. I spent several years working with feral cat colonies throughout central Massachusetts in a TNR program, and they are quite similar in their social structure to lions, less like other more solitary cat species. The colonies at their core tend to be groups of related females, with adult males roaming between a few different groups of females. Neutered males tend to act more like females and stay with a particular colony. Given the artificial food supply the "crazy cat ladies" provide, you will see colonies of unrelated individuals, but if there are multiple food sources readily available the colonies will tend to fracture by maternal line.
I wonder if seeing nature as more ferocious, competitive and individualistic that it really is comes from psychological projection.
He was a zoologist apart from all the other topics he had time to deal in because of his noble heritage. Here is the wikipedia article [0] since I do not know how HN regards links to e.g. libgen.
The bolder cat was hit by a car one morning and died. His adoptive brother never fully gave up waiting for him at the top of the stairs. As far as he knew his brother just hadn't come home yet. It was quite sad. It wasn't long after that that he went outside for the last time and never came back.
Cat Senses : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_senses
Am sure cats are able to distinguish bird types by their voices, and other prey as well, to a much more sophisticated degree than we (our ears) can. Calling those vocalizations "words" almost certainly wrong.
> The other 19 were household cats (mean number living together: 6.37)
This means the number of cats, right? Since it's contrasted to the cafe cats. So these are basically three families with six or seven cats each. The question being: how was it easier to find three such families than a bunch of families with three cats? What kind of place is that? I mean, sure it's Japan but still.
I'm also really happy this is empirically validated, its's so easy to notice things like this and wonder if you're crazy.
Otherwise, they just look at you as if you have the IQ of a wombat.
Will we ever know?
Cats do not have the brain circuitry for semantic networks (based on a language concepts) evolved yet. So called language areas are required.
How this crap is even got through a peer review? Rithoric question, I know.
This is one of note thousands of videos of cats and dogs using buttons to talk.
Cats, and all mammals, have a neocortex. Theirs is not as deeply layered or large as humans, but they most definitely have the ability to reason abstractly, are aware of themselves, think emotionally, and engage in complex, time aware planning over long periods.
Your views are wrong. Language areas like Broca's region in the human brain are a consequence of physical distribution relative to the connectome and sensory endpoints. If you were to rewire the millions of connections to the lips, tongue, mouth, ears, and other body parts to be locations on the neocortex, broca's region would be somewhere different. You have about 1 square meter of neocortex responsible for all of your perception and cognition, and almost all of it is uniform. Neurons aren't differentiated by function, and animal experiments show that plasticity allows for arbitrary rewiring.
The literature in the field shows that human cognition is likely superior to other species in the depth of cortical layering and size of the organ. It's likely the only reason elephants and whales or other animals with larger brains can't compete with humans is the mere absence of hands and vocal organs. Our range of colors and audible senses are important but lesser than many animals.
Give an orca hands and human speech and there's nothing we know about neuroscience to imply that the animal wouldn't be smarter and more capable than humans. There's a lot of evidence that the killer whale would be more intelligent than humans in many ways.
The cortical layering and columnar architecture of neuron clusters differs between species, and seems to dictate the cognitive depth of abstract reasoning. There may be different algorithmic constructions in neural connections that favor human level cognition.
In principle, however, human brains aren't terribly different from many other large mammals, and elephants certainly display complex, emotional, symbolic, and abstract reasoning well within a range comparable to human experience.
Your notion of animal cognition is unscientific and biased toward an assumption of human superiority that isn't grounded in fact. Neuroscience is slowly and tirelessly matching toward reverse engineering the brain. The more we learn, the more we find similarity in the basic functions of mammal brains, from mice to humans to blue whales.
Like I said though, I want to believe. Can you think of any longer videos that might convince a skeptic?
The owner is playing with Billi with a toy on a string, then drops it on her back. She then quickly (within 10 seconds) presses "No", then "Back", to tell her owner to get the toy off of her back. If she was just pressing buttons to get a reaction, this would be no more likely than "Morning" "Love you", or "Want" "Hello", or any other arbitrary pair of buttons.
"No" is another higher-level abstract concept that I wouldn't expect anyone to master before more basic concepts. If the cat could say "ears, no" or "tummy, no" with similar confidence, then I would be convinced it understands combining the concept of "no" with another word. And those seem easy to test too. Cats don't like you messing with those areas.
The author acts as if cats can understand abstract concepts and combining words into a SVO grammar. And with dozens of words!
"later morning" "later play [with] dad" "love you mommy"
This is simply far outside the cognitive abilities of cats.
Edit: Confirmation bias is so strong that I get downvotes for writing this.
"Yes it is!"
"No it's not!"
"Yeahuh it is!"
Do I also need to provide evidence that the earth is not flat?
Citations here should be trivial.
I can absolutely cite and argue that the Earth is not flat - and win.
I suspect you will not be able to do so for this claim you are making.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_language
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human%E2%80%93animal_communica...
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-10261-5
https://owlcation.com/stem/The-difference-between-animal-and...
Besides, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Here the extraordinary claim is that cats can understand grammar and abstract concepts.
Otherwise I could claim that birds can play chess and demand you to provide papers to prove the opposite.
> Such signing may be considered complex enough to be called a form of language if the inventory of signs is large, the signs are relatively arbitrary, and the animals seem to produce them with a degree of volition (as opposed to relatively automatic conditioned behaviors or unconditioned instincts, usually including facial expressions). In experimental tests, animal communication may also be evidenced through the use of lexigrams (as used by chimpanzees and bonobos).
and
> Seyfarth, Cheney and Marler reported that vervet monkeys (now called Chlorocebus pygerythrus) responded differently to different types of alarm calls2 (although some of the calls overlap acoustically3 and this view is currently debated4). More recently, west African green monkeys (Chlorocebus sabaeus) rapidly learned the novel referent of an alarm call that was given in response to a drone5. Referential signaling is not limited to primates.
You'll notice the parent did share sources! They presented a bundle of them, of actual cats using actual signifiers to refer correctly to signified objects.
Humans have one more difference from others: human cubs are born helpless. They even do not know how to use their eyes. They need to learn everything themselves. All the pre-wired genetic firmware was destroyed by evolution. It is very inconvenient for mothers of course, but on the other hand this shift from hardware to software gives unprecedented abilities to adapt to different environments. And probably it gives a lot of experience of making sense of the mess of input signal that can be useful later. And of course it is a factor of a selection: if you cannot learn how to use your eyes, then you are not Sapience enough to breed.