Hey Kitty! Yes, you. A new study suggests household cats can respond to the sound of their own names.
No surprise to you or most cat owners, right? But Japanese scientists said Thursday that they鈥檝e provided the first experimental evidence that cats can distinguish between words that we people say.
So you鈥檙e kind of like dogs, whose communication with people has been studied a lot more, and who鈥檝e been shown to recognize hundreds of words if they鈥檙e highly trained. Sorry if the comparison offends you, Kitty.
Atsuko Saito of Sophia University in Tokyo says there鈥檚 no evidence cats actually attach meaning to our words, not even their own names. Instead, they鈥檝e learned that when they hear their names they often get rewards like food or play, or something bad like a trip to the vet. And they hear their names a lot. So the sound of it becomes special, even if they don鈥檛 really understand it refers to their identity.
Saito and colleagues describe the results of their research in the journal Scientific Reports. In four experiments with 16 to 34 animals, each cat heard a recording of its owner鈥檚 voice, or another person鈥檚 voice, that slowly recited a list of four nouns or other cat鈥檚 names, followed by the cat鈥檚 own name.
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Many cats initially reacted 鈥 such as by moving their heads, ears or tails 鈥 but gradually lost interest as the words were read. The crucial question was whether they鈥檇 respond more to their name.
Sure enough, on average, these cats perked up when they heard their own name.
Kristyn Vitale, who studies cat behaviour and the cat-human bond at Oregon State University in Corvallis but didn鈥檛 participate in the new work, said the results 鈥渕ake complete sense to me.鈥
Vitale, who said she has trained cats to respond to verbal commands, agreed that the new results don鈥檛 mean that cats assign a sense of self to their names. It鈥檚 more like being trained to recognize a sound, she said.
Monique Udell, who also studies animal behaviour at Oregon State, said the study shows 鈥渃ats are paying attention to you, what you say and what you do, and they鈥檙e learning from it.鈥
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Malcolm Ritter, The Associated Press
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