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.