New study publish in Scientific Reports reveal that cats can connect words and images significantly faster than human toddlers. Research led by Dr. Saho Takagi and her team at Azabu University, Japan, finds that adult cats form associations between visual cues and spoken words in a fraction of the time it took young children.
The experiment’s outcomes suggest a deeper insight into cats’ cognitive abilities, highlighting the potential for feline understanding of language cues.
In the study, 31 adult cats were present with a sequence of animate clips, each accompanied by a spoken, made-up word.
The clips, featuring a red sun and a blue unicorn pair with unique words, were repeat until the cats show reduce attention.
After a brief pause, the researchers switch the images and sounds, pairing the words with different visuals.
As, the cats respond to these alter pairings with increase interest, suggesting they notice the inconsistency and had connect the original words with the initial images.
Dr. Saho Takagi said that some cats show height attention, with dilate pupils when face with the “switched” condition, signalling surprise.
This reaction indicates that the cats were not only capable of associating words and images but also recognise the discrepancy, a level of understanding previously thought to be uncommon in cats.
Human toddlers generally require four exposures to a similar experiment, with each session lasting 20 seconds, to reach the same level of understanding.
While, the cats accomplish this in just two nine-second trials.
Dr. Carlo Siracusa, a veterinary behaviourist from the University of Pennsylvania, said that the difficulty of comparing adult cats with human infants, emphasising the evolutionary and cognitive differences between the species.
He also said that studies like these are challenging, as animal behaviour can be difficult to interpret without inherent biases.
But, the findings add to a growing body of evidence showing cats’ cognitive capabilities.
As it remains uncertain whether these abilities are inherent or shape by domestication, the study reflects a novel approach to understanding feline intelligence.
