Greeting Vocalizations in Domestic Cats Are More Frequent with Male Caregivers
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Simple vocalizations are cool, but that's pretty limited communication, and if they're capable of so much more, it's pretty likely that they're using individual meows in much the same way a human would under the same constraints. Imagine only being able to say "HEY!" and having to use context and body language in every situation.
TheyCanTalk have got n>10k animals so far, mostly cats and dogs, with a handful of pigs, rabbits, goats, and others. I've seen a few horses, cows, and others on social media, too, and they've got a lot more customers than study participants.
I tried it on my cat and it worked although she may have just come over to investigate why I was making weird noises at her!
The rest of the original guy's "how to speak cat" series is also fun.
Check out their research. It's very solid - there are all sorts of conditioned response tricks to see on social media, but the UCSD research has recorded examples of multiple pets using the same untrained behavior where they string together 2 or more words to indicate a new idea. Not only are the pets talking, but there are emergent and convergent abilities being documented that demonstrates a common mode of cognition that arises from the underlying cognitive capacity of these animals, across species.
There's a great example of a dog on youtube where it used "squeaky car" to point out a firetruck with the sirens going. There are examples of dogs "laughing" at farts, calling out smells, telling owners about injuries or burrs stuck in paws, discomfort or pain in a leg or stomach or ear, and so forth. They indicate affection, anger, impatience, happiness, fear, confusion. They identify group membership - stranger, family, neighbor, friend, human, animal, dog, etc.
Video examples on YouTube are ubiquitous at this point - take a look at the training methods, the way vocabulary is modeled and taught, and then go in with a skeptical perspective. For those owners that follow the teaching methodology validated by the UCSD research, they're providing their animals with a legitimate skillset that empowers the pet with language understanding, the ability to communicate and creatively produce novel and complex ideas.
This shouldn't be too surprising - based on neuroscience research, it looks like the engine of human cognition is the mammalian neocortex. Lions, tigers, and bears (and dogs, cats, whales, primates, and nearly all mammals) are likely able to use language, given the apparatus and training to do so. Humans have a unique capacity for complex vocalization and extremely sophisticated culture, allowing rapid uptake of language skills. Given the opportunity, it looks likely that nearly all mammals will have some facility with language, simply because the neocortex function is so powerful and plastic.
When you say “convincing” what are you looking for? Do you think these youtubers are just using editing tricks and traps to convince a gullible internet? Genuinely curious.
Who was even trying to push this narrative in the first place?
On which particular thesis?
There are a lot of examples, but also I am using "complex" generously - "we go friend walk later" and things like that, the limitations seem to be 3-4 direct ideas chained together, with person+activity+time being about as complicated as things get. It's probably possible with the right curriculum to expand on that significantly, but it's really hard to get sufficient repetition on abstract things, and dog attention is highly selective and limited. If they get overexcited, they're not in word-learning mode anymore, they're just fixated on the ball, or the pigeon, or the weird smell that just happened.
Once BCI for dogs is a thing, it wouldn't shock me to have a dog eventually write simple sentences or even engage in some sort of ideogram based text communications, but you're never getting a canine Shakespeare. You could definitely get narco k9s that deliberately say things like "I smell cocaine on this guy's shoe", or "I don't smell anything bad". With that and bodycam, you'd have a record and a way of auditing k9s.
One of the potential spin-offs of this canine cognition research is the potential for a structured standard vocabulary for working dogs in various professions, with obvious benefits in police accountability, disability accommodation and assistance dogs, and so on. If all dog trainers worked from a common curriculum, then it could be standard that dogs are taught a consistent 30-40 baseline words, so if a dog escapes, it can interact with animal control officers or the public in useful ways.
The biggest thing is that they can use language at all, I think. It's wonderful, and I hope it ends up being a big boost for animal welfare in general.
It's astonishing, I didn't think they could do that, but apparently they can.
One of the cats had seemed interested in fetch for several years but it never quite worked. I tried a bunch of different toys and finally found a plastic spring that she will fetch very well.
over there; bed; basket; lead; walk; wait at the door; go to [room]; go to [family member]; stay; stay on the path; paw; paws up; sit; lie down; heel; don't pull on the lead; no more poo poo; no more wee wee; this is the commute; up; where's your piggy?; treat?; buscuit?: up for a cuddle?; want to come up?; permission; okay; no; stop; this way; stay close; hungry for some food?; water?; down; don't lick; who did this?; come here; shall we go the pub; let's go;
and probably 5 or 6 more words/phrases. I don't include words like catch/fetch where accompanying action may trigger the response.
It's definitely not a three year old's grasp of language, but it's probably a point that a baby crosses somewhere between 9 and 15 months old.
My cats will regularly come when called, if they feel like it.
But... what's she going to do if you say fetch? If she wants to fetch, she'll bring you the toy and if she doesn't want to fetch, you telling her that you would like to isn't going to change her mind.
This is unique in my personal experience. I've haven't seen this in other cats.
Unlike dogs, cats aren’t seeking your approval. It is a different kind of relationship.
While my cat doesn't seek my approval, she is definitely highly food motivated to the point where she was faking wanting to go outside and thus put a harness on (which she does not enjoy) just for the treats she would get.
I can give my 3-year old (38 months) multi-part instructions and he can even ask clarifying questions back when my instructions are ambiguous or he doesn’t understand them. He’s also being to ask insightful questions as he observes the world around him.
To suggest cats are capable of anything remotely close to that (with humans) requires extraordinary evidence.
This is kinda moot in this discussion given cats have neither the facial structure nor lung capacity for this. Others are essentially saying that a cat would (have the mental capacity to) do these things if they were not so physically constrained.
If it’s true, someone ought to be able to demonstrate it.
This is not a truism.
> Again, extraordinary evidence required.
Yeah, whatever, dude. I'm not trying to convince you, just pointing out the irrelevance of the point that humans are physically capable of speaking like humans. That's moot to the claim that had been made in the parent comment.
I could go on about other points you made. For example, you seem to be conflating working memory ("multi-part instructions") with understanding of language, given that was what the parent commenter had claimed.
> He’s also being to ask insightful questions as he observes the world around him.
Cats don't have the same mental capabilities as a 3-4 year-old but that is not under contention. That doesn't strictly mean they don't have a similar capacity for language as a 3-4 year-old. Put another way, you were not talking about your son's capacity for understanding language but rather his general mental capacity, which is not an apt refutation of what was claimed.
This isn't to convince you of some belief (indeed, you're entitled to your opinion, friend) but to point out the illogic in your argument.
So they can’t speak nor understand us, nor remember several instructions, nor formulate questions, so what then do they have that puts them on par with a 3-4 year old?
I’ve had cats that could do the same.
Unless they pre-registered that prediction, isn't this just the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy?
> We acknowledge that our sample size limits the generalizability of our findings on cat greeting behaviors.
> We also suspect that the geographical and cultural factors may have influenced interaction patterns, given that all our participants were residing in Türkiye.
This is very funny. Ig Noble prize stuff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ig_Nobel_Prize
Anecdotally i can see that being similar in europe though
[0] "We also tested whether demographic factors such as the influenced the amount of greeting behavior expressed by household cats."
"Greeting Vocalizations in [These 31] Domestic Cats Are More Frequent with Male Caregivers"
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You couldn't write a book containing the context needed to qualify a factual statement about any of these cats. It seems even the article authors couldn't be bothered, writing only 5 pages after failing meet their nonsensical objective.