cat behavior – fakuto

If you pay very close attention, you may finally be able to tell WTF your cat is thinking.

A study in the journal Animal Welfare found that cats show their moods on their faces, but that only a small subset of people can actually pick up on what they’re feeling.

Researchers at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada conducted the study by asking 6329 participants to watch videos of cats reacting to certain events. The participants had to name whether the cat was exhibiting a positive or negative reaction by relying only on their faces—not their tails or any other body language.

Most of the respondents were cat owners. Nonetheless, their average score was just 59 percent correct, which is not very impressive.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

But 13 percent of participants scored very well on the test. They correctly guessed 15 out of 20 questions. These participants weren’t just cat owners, but people who had very extensive experience with cats, such as veterinarians.

Thus, the researchers concluded that a minority of people can tell what cats are feeling based on their facial expressions alone.

It’s not clear whether this talent is innate or learned, though.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

“They could be naturally brilliant, and that’s why they become veterinarians,” the study’s senior author, Georgia Mason, told The Washington Post. “But they also have a lot of opportunity to learn, and they’ve got a motivation to learn, because they’re constantly deciding: Is this cat better? Do we need to change the treatment? Does this cat need to go home? Is this cat about to take a chunk out of my throat?”

Who knows? Maybe you, too, can learn this skill one day.

If you want to test yourself, a shorter version of the video test that participants used is available online.

The post Your Cat Makes Facial Expressions, You Just Probably Can’t Read Them appeared first on UberFacts.

Cats and dogs respond very differently to their names. Dogs can be counted on to come running on command, while cats will frequently ignore you completely. But it turns out that cats do recognize and react to their names, according to new research.

Researchers in Japan conducted a series of experiments to study whether cats responded differently to their names as compared to other similar-sounding words.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

For each experiment, a person spoke four different “nouns with the same lengths and accents” as the cat’s actual name. These words habituated the cats to hearing words spoken. Then the person would say the cat’s name.

The researchers found that most cats clearly reacted to their own names. They did so whether the name came from their owner or an unfamiliar person. They also differentiated their names from other cats’ names.

“This is the first experimental evidence showing cats’ ability to understand human verbal utterances,” the researchers wrote.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

The one exception was with cats who lived with others in a cat cafe, who did not distinguish their names from the names of other cats.

It’s unclear whether cats understand that their name represents their identity. They may instead associate the word with rewards like food or petting.

In any case, though, they definitely know their names — which means they just don’t feel the need to come running when you call it. Good to know!

The post Study Finds That Cats Know Their Names as Well as Dogs appeared first on UberFacts.