Cats learn to associate word and picture faster than babies

Cats have learned the basics of human communication during millennia of coexistence, can be concluded from a recent study. In the experiment, the cats learned to associate words with pictures, and even faster than small human children.

It has already been found in previous studies that cats know how to interpret human actions and gestures in different ways. They understood finger pointing to show where there is food available. In another experiment, they realized that looking towards man gave food.

The fact that cats and humans have lived side by side for more than 10,000 years may have developed the understanding, as research In the scientific journal Heredity evaluate.

Cats can even learn not only their own name, but also those of familiar cats and people names. This was observed in Japanese in the study.

“I was very surprised because it meant that cats are able to covertly listen to human conversations and understand words without immediate reward-based training,” the author of the new study Saho Takagi says In the journal Science.

Takagi, who works at Abazu University, began to wonder if cats are really tuned in to understand human language. It also tells about the new research Science Alert-website.

Takagi the group put the cats to the examwhich has been used to study the association of words with pictures in 14-month-old children. The children were shown pictures and heard a short word at the same time.

Now was put to the test 31 adult pet cats. The test cats had lived in homes with several cats or in cat cafes where customers are accompanied by cats.

The cats were made to watch two pattern animations on the computer screen for 9 seconds at a time. At the same time, the cat heard its owner or caretaker say the word attached to the picture four times from the recording. Words meant nothing.

Major some of the cats associated the pattern with the word after only two 9-second lessons, faster than 14-month-old children. Most of the children recently needed four fifteen-second viewings and seven repetitions of the word in the test.

“Cats pay attention to what we say in daily life and try to understand us more than we realize,” says Takagi.

The cats were also tested in such a way that half of the pictures were associated with the wrong word. When the wrong word was heard, the cats showed clear confusion. They stared at the wrong pattern longer, pupils dilated.

According to the authors, the results show that cats are able to connect a word and a picture quickly.

With LITTLE children Experiments with cats in the 1990s and now cannot be directly compared because there were differences in the tests.

The babies only heard one-syllable words spoken by an unknown person with different accents. The cats heard three-syllable words, and the owner pronounced them slightly exaggerated.

Still, according to the researchers, it can be concluded that cats know how to associate words with pictures. In the future, the ability could also be studied in other animals.

Correction October 26 at 11:15 p.m.: Contrary to what was initially mentioned in the text, the words did not mean the Sun or the unicorn. The words were made up. October 27 at 9:30 a.m.: The study was published in the scientific journal Heredity, published by Nature Portfolio, not in Nature.