Cats understand us better than we think. A Japanese study shows that they know how to associate words with pictures and react if we make a mistake. They are even faster than children at making these associations. This work proves that cats listen to us, even if their behavior is to the contrary.
We often think that cats steal from their owners. But they pay much more attention to what we say to them than they actually think. A Japanese study, published in the journal Scientific reportsclaims that domestic felines will be able to understand a wide range of terms that we use in everyday life.
A research team from Izabu University (Japan) came to this surprising conclusion after conducting an experiment involving about thirty adult cats. Each of them was placed in front of a computer screen on which two images appeared one after the other, viz. SoleilSoleil And a cloud.
Meanwhile, a recorded message from each cat’s owner was broadcast over a loudspeaker in which he could be heard saying the same word four times: Cararo or Param. The former refers to the cloud and the latter to the sun. This experiment was repeated several times so that the cats could learn the meaning of each word.
Anxious cats
To test their understanding, the researchers showed them the same pictures, but paired with the wrong word. The term Cararo Referred to the sun, and no longer to the cloud. An upside that didn’t escape the cats. In fact, scientists found that felines stared at the screen longer when the spoken word did not match the image in front of their eyes. Some of the cats even had dilated pupils, indicating their surprise.
They learn faster than children.
These reactions will be evidence that the cats have associated each term with a specific image. Surprisingly, these animals make sense of words faster than a small child. ” Most cats habituated to the stimulus pair after four trials, meaning they had only nine seconds of exposure over two trials to each picture-word pair. In studies with infants, they were given at least four twenty-two second trials for each picture-word pair. », the researchers explain in their research.
Scientists at the University of Azabu don’t know why cats make word-image associations so quickly. Regardless, the results of their study show that our cats are sensitive to the meaning of the words we use when addressing them. Even if they sometimes lead us to believe otherwise.
