Cats that fetch are an evolutionary mystery
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
The simple answer is that being thrown make the cat practice how to land.
But the actual answer is probably that creatures like cats are big enough to contain a lot of evolutionary noises and legacies that it can do random shit.
But he was wierd. He liked going on walks on a leash, and demanded a chair at the table when we played boardgames and he would happily sit and watch us play (or sit in the middle of the board until we got him a seat).
The first time I met him, he very clearly, intentionally guided me to his brother who was sick (meow, runs towards me, meow then back towards his brother, repeat).
We lost him kinda without warning, he got an ear infection that popped his eardrum then he never recovered from the shock. Cats don't communicate pain or discomfort well, so we didn't even realize something was wrong until it was too late.
But yeah, consistent recessive outliers are an evolutionary advantage trait. I've seen a lot of arguments that neurodiversity is an evolutionary trait, as having multiple behavior patterns in the population helps with survival. Cats are social animals, which means a similar neurodiversity pressure probably acts on them.
I've lived with several different cats whose favourite position was directly between the people and the television. I'm not a cat person (nor a dog person); I know nothing. But I suppose they like human attention, so they sit where the humans are looking.
I'm pretty sure it is, as society needs us nerds to invent new things.
Also what's the evolutionary explanation for you trying to save the cat?
Personally I think it's genetic drift. In safe environments natural selection by definition is much less strict and thus all kinds of random mutations pass the bar of survival.
Demonstrating trust strengthens bonds. In the wild, that kid might be more likely to defend that cat’s interests when e.g. food ran short.
So you swung the proverbial cat ? :)
The cat being thrown probably feels the same as a human driving a fast car or riding a roller-coaster, or a dog putting its head out a car window, or a mouse stopping suddenly on an exercise wheel to let it spin it around.
I had never considered they may be doing that on purpose.
He was a large black and white short-hair cat. I always described his behavior as very dog-like and some people were very surprised by it.
Edit: I should have at least tried to respond to your question. I agree with the sibling comments theory about how animals enjoying movement can encourage their physical development.
The night I got home he was so happy he started bringing me his toys on bed. All of his toys. Eventually various household objects. Finally a wooden spoon to my face! I was so confused I tossed it away, and he played fetch with it ever since(and later other objects sometimes).
I had a cat that would gift give if I was away for a while too. I always figured it was a bribe to not do it again. He also liked to play fetch, but it predated the gift thing.
Maybe domestic cats are slowly evolving into dogs!
Some cats now have floppy ears -- I first saw that in the late 90s. Floppy ears is a sign of domestication in dogs and foxes.
I’m only a little behind you. I noted that my dad (b. mid 1930s) would pick up and cuddle our cats but was pretty unconcerned about dropping the cat when done (cat would always twist and land on its feet). Also kitty litter was only developed in the early 60s so ppl chucked the cats out at night.
I’ve always been careful to rotate the cat and place it somewhere on its feet. I think the cultures simply used to be casually rougher and it made the cats wary. My cats will lie on their backs in my arms and fall asleep. With my dad they were happy for a cuddle and would purr but their eyes were always open as they were alert to an unexpected change in orientation and support.
Because I now had food out for my cat I ended up with a lot of street cats come visit (i.e. steal food). My house was pretty open (tropical climate) so bit difficult to prevent, and I didn't really mind so it was all good. Can use a lot of adjectives for these cats, but "friendly" and "open to human interaction" are not among them.
At some point I left the bedroom door open and a kitten wandered in. My bedroom was closed off and I wanted to get him out as I wanted to close the door to leave for the evening. Had to get him from behind the wardrobe.
I had been feeding him for a few months already so I figured that should be fine. It wasn't. I found out that the answer to "how much pain can a small cute kitten inflict" is "surprisingly a lot". Then there were the two siblings that would miaow at me to get food, but then hiss at me for getting too close to the food bowl where they were waiting. Herp derp.
Cats that didn't grow up with humans are completely different animals then cats that grew up with humans. This is probably fairly close to your barn cats from 200 years ago.
> "...and makes me wonder how many other cats can be trained..."
Reaction: Trained by a typical cat owner, or trained by your top-0.1% in animal training skill daughter?
It makes me wonder how much instinctual human behavior we're conflating with learned behavior. Since we have language it's easy to assume that we do things because we learned them. But what about a Tarzan situation? How would a human behave if raised in total isolation, or even under the purview of other animals like the legendary Remus and Romulus (at least they had each other)? If the role of cat and human were reversed, what would humans do that the cats found endearing and "just human instinct?"
Sounded controversial to me when I first encountered it, but apparently accepted by modern philosophers as a legit argument. (That language is necessarily a public/communal thing.)
Ok, that is interesting and I can kind of see it, but this is basically assuming you already have acquired language and talks about the actual act of using language. Otherwise it's a bit of a circular argument: consciously deciding what a word means, as opposed to intuiting its meaning from experience, context and memory, requires being able to consciously structure and organize thoughts. And for that you need to be able to categorize the thoughts, which requires labeling them, which already presupposes a rudimentary form of language.
(Also, if I were to "make up a word with a meaning", use it in a sentence I write down, then read it again the next day, then there is something stopping me from changing my mind on what it means: making sense of my own past thoughts. But this is a bit of a cheat because "past me" and "current me" are arguably two different entities)
The problem I have with Wittgenstein (and many philosophers) is that they rarely, if ever, seem to leave the domain of language and semiotics to consider the world outside of the signposts that the signposts actually point to. They're having too much fun with their language games.
Meanwhile, Sacks is always trying to stay grounded in what we know from research and case studies. For example Seeing Voices describes accounts of the prelingual deaf who acquired sign language later in life, and therefore were able to describe what their experience of acquiring language was like (since childhood amnesia[0] did erase the memories of this process). I can't fully recall the details on the spot here, but living without language essentially is like suffering from an absence of mental "scaffolding", making it impossible to compose ideas together to build cohesive, complex lines of thought.
So sacks also concludes that we need other humans to acquire language (really, to become human in general), but it's more of a matter of bootstrapping: in order to acquire language you need a dialogue, and you can't have that if none of the participants of the dialogue posses a language!
> So sacks also concludes that we need other humans to acquire language (really, to become human in general)
I do agree with Sacks' conclusion, having first come across a version of it in Hegel's dialectic--the dialectic of self vs. other. Or in my interpretation, of personhood and relationship. i.e. Personhood is forged through relationships with other persons.
Do you think this applies to AGI? That it needs to bootstrap itself by communicating and relating with other intelligences? This, and related concepts like free will, tend to be ignored in the scientific literature on the subject[1].
[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.08708 Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence: Insights from the Science of Consciousness
That sounds plausible. On the other hand, it might be another case our tendency to judge intelligence by the already existing intelligence that we know of, which is us. But we probably shouldn't assume that that is the only form of "intelligence" that exists.
Related to that: these types of discussion tend to get rather fuzzy because most of the words involved ("intelligence" especially) aren't nearly as neatly defined as our gut feeling tends to make us believe. And depending on which interpretation people pick they can wildly talk past each other, or even confuse themselves by not realizing they're switching between which aspect of intelligence they're talking about in the middle of their argument without realizing it.
Which is precisely why I don't really feel the urge to go deeper into what might be needed for AGI right now though, apologies. I think we maybe should put a bit more effort into understanding humans first.
Cat2: completely afraid of anything and everything outdoors. Will follow you around the house, but absolutely not follow you outside.
My experience with fetching cats is that it is a comforting/boredom relief behavior. They bring me a toy, I throw and they chase it, then bring it back to my general location (they get distracted and drop it easily, most often right before jumping onto the couch). The fact the loop can be repeated a few times before they get bored again and move on is just bonus points.
I had an extremely bright kitten that learned his name in a week, would come running no matter where he was in the (fairly large) house when I called his name, even if he was asleep, etc and would perfectly play fetch, up to and including bringing the toy all the way back to my hand/lap.
He didn’t forget his name or how to play a year later. He just realized he doesn’t have to get up from his comfortable spot just because I felt like calling his name. Likewise he figured if he just makes a half-ditch effort to bring a fetch toy back, perhaps picking it up a few paces only, I’ll still pick it back up and play fetch with him again.
They’re creatures that (who) have mastered the art of doing the bare minimum to get by.
Something that becomes incredibly obvious if they react, e.g. twitch their tail, when you call their name but not another.
Whether or not we consider the basal instinct as retrieval vs some other similar instinct that can be easily used to motivate the retrieval behavior [1], I’d wager most dog owners that have trained (or attempted at least!) would agree that some dogs are just more likely to become good retrievers which to me suggests that there’s more than just a basic pleasure stimulus response.
Similar dog behaviors based on breed that I would argue at least point towards instinctual behavior being at least a partial explanation for behavior are herding and live stock protection breeds. Take a quick watch of any of the sheep herding competitions or other fun related videos [2] to see what I mean.
However, at the end of the day I also think that most “instincts” are more of a shorthand/stereotype for some set of abstract probabilities that may or may not result in a dog being good or bad at any specifically desired behavior.
[1] https://www.wildfowlmag.com/editorial/tips_strategies_wf_ins... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2FX9rviEhw
Because we fundamentally disagree on the intent. I don't agree that a cat is engaging in parasitic exploitation of the human toy-thrower, and I don't agree that a dog is toiling in servitude to the thankless human who keeps throwing away the retrieved item. They both love chasing things, they both understand that to chase the thing again they need to return it to the human, and they both appreciate the positive reinforcement, bonding, petting, and attention when they do so.
A dog however simply does not do things on its own much, dogs are maybe even more social than humans and live in packs (dog owner is de facto pack leader). Play is more social for them. Take out peer/leader to play with and half the excitement is gone. Dogs generally would not consider mechanical ball dispenser equally exciting of a partner
would a substitute suffice? (or offend?)
there's a guy in my neighborhood who cruises around on his MTB with a shoulder cat. i am very jealous.
https://idlewords.com/talks/robot_armies.htm
> He picked it up and threw it, and she ran and brought it back several times until she had had enough... My roommate hadn't trained the cat to do anything. She had trained him to be her cat toy.
He passed away in 2020, still miss him.
Besides, cats objectively have fewer rights because I can own one, for example.
This is better bait for a pedant then a laser pointer is for a cat...
Also the cat doesn't even care, it's not cats getting offended it's just people.
I think it's more permissible when it is used to emphasise that the cat as a living being is exercising agency in voluntary behaviour that they enjoy. (1)
e.g. "Cats that shed" or "rocks that crumble" vs "Cats who fetch" and "people who sing".
"Cats that shed" is definitely correct. "Cats who fetch" implies that the cat has agency and choice here, is in a small way "human-like".
On the other hand, above I just wrote "I am a foreigner that ..." and Grammarly corrected me to "I am a foreigner who ...". I am still leaving this comment here as a reference to others that wonder the same.
Nevertheless, in formal, written English, “who” is the overwhelmingly correct choice. Cf https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=people+who%2Cp...
When it no longer even sounds wrong to well educated well-read native speakers, it’s pure prescriptive conservatism to hang on to the idea that there’s a grammatical rule there.
I think there’s a stronger instinct to use ‘who’ in preference to ‘which’ in these kinds of constructions - but overall in English both who and which are frequently replaced with ‘that’ in contexts where that previously would have been considered incorrect.
“Who” is more often identified with individual/identity than sentience. They’re not talking about particular, individual cats.
I'm not sure there is any grammatical rule for this, though. And besides, nobody likes people that nitpick ;)
If the intent and meaning came across and the intention wasn't to offend and the meaning is clear there is zero and I mean zero need to pretend to be offended. The cat doesn't even care and clearly no body here thinks of cats as Bluetooth speakers... what practical purpose does any of this serve? None.
It's all part of that pronoun thing started by transgender people. The desire to be recognized as a certain gender in language codified into a "law" and that law is now being taken to logical extremes in such a way that we have to use the correct term for cats. The next step is to teach cats English so they can actually be offended.
My problem is other people having arbitrary problems with language.