Cats could have a more “profound” mind than previously believed, one researcher said.
Cats appear to track their owners’ movements around the house, a new study has found, supporting the idea that cats maintain a mental representation of their owners even when they cannot see them.
That finding suggests cats are capable of higher-level cognitive functions like imagination and planning, researchers at Kyoto University and Sophia University in Japan concluded. Their discovery has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“This study shows that cats can mentally map their location based on their owner’s voice,” the study’s lead author, Saho Takagi, told The Guardian. “[It suggests] that cats have the ability to picture the invisible in their minds. Cats [may] have a more profound mind than is thought.”
Takagi and colleagues documented the reactions of 50 domestic cats when their owners called their names from another room. That was followed by either their owner or a stranger calling their name a second time from a speaker on the opposite side of the room they were inhabiting.
Eight “blind” human participants watched these interactions and ranked the cats’ level of surprise based on their ear and head movements. They found that the cats appeared confused only when the voice of their owner suddenly appeared on the other side of the room.
“These results suggest that cats hold a mental representation of the unseen owner and map their owner’s location from the owner’s voice, showing evidence of socio-spatial cognition,” the researchers wrote.
……..
- Discussion
-
New study shows how cats track their owners' movements around the house https://t.co/uCBqQGPdc6 pic.twitter.com/wGEvN9oOMO
— The Hill (@thehill) November 12, 2021
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.