A new study has revealed that cats have an incredible ability to track, in their minds, the movements of their humans even when they are out of sight, using sociospatial cognition. The researchers say the study challenges the notion that dogs are more interested in their owners’ whereabouts than cats are.
“It’s generally believed that cats aren’t as interested in their owners as dogs, but it turns out they were mentally representing the invisible presence of their owners,” said Saho Takagi, a doctoral student at Kyoto University and first author of the study.
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“Cats spend most of their time sleeping and people tend to think it’s good for them to sleep,” he said Takagi to CNN. “But cats … can be thinking about a lot of things.” The report described how cats draw “mind maps” that lead them to their owner, based solely on their hypersensitive listening skills.
The study looked at how cats track their humans without visual cues, either in the familiar family environment or in a cat cafe, using only recorded clips of their owners’ voices.
During the experiment, the speakers were occasionally placed in different locations, giving the impression that the voice had instantly jumped from one room to another. Alternatively, they were also made to follow unfamiliar voices as well as random electronic sounds, none of which piqued his interest as much as the voices of his tutors.
The researchers found that cats seemed genuinely surprised when their owners seemed to “transport” from one place to another – indicating that the cats could see in their minds exactly where the sound was coming from.
This kind of thinking indicates “complex” cognitive abilities that have been seen in other animals, including primates, according to their study, which is currently awaiting peer review before being published. in the open access journal PLOS One .
Previous studies have shown that cats can distinguish between voices they know and voices they don’t, and that they can remember and locate hidden objects. Thus, “it seems plausible that cats are able to mentally map the locations of others based on vocalizations,” the authors wrote.
“This is a skill that underlies creativity and imagination,” said Takagi. “Cats are believed to have a deeper mind than you think.”
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