How intelligent are cats? Intelligent enough to be the subject of a very long article about feline intelligence which I also did not read in full due to it's excessive length!
Cats and dogs can be roughly assessed as being about the same in intelligence but vary strongly in trainability due to their different motivations. Dogs gain advantage by pack living, cats by loose association. Pack living offers a better platform for coordination and training hence dogs are more motivated to learn tricks.
In the past this trainability was associated with intelligence but modern studies indicate trainability and intelligence are not correlated as closely as we used to think.
In short: you train a dog, your cat trains you aka the old joke about dogs having masters and cats having staff is probably true.
Nice summary. I skimmed the entire article, and it appears to be mainly about explaining why the traditional consensus that cats are less intelligent than dogs would be biased.
"Because we judge intelligence by comparing other creatures to ourselves, many popular accounts of cat behaviour describe learning as though cats are mentally defective humans rather than highly specialised carnivores."
I wish it had pointed out cats also have fast twitch muscles. Their actions are constrained by this. They thus aren’t going to rush through a maze on a whim or for the chance at a treat.
That's just the tip of the iceberg. Cats are often used in gory neurology research. The research is unnecessary and wasteful, most of it just grant-farming. [1]
I thought the pack dominance hierarchy concept for wolves, that the article mentions, was observed to be a myth?[1]
Wolf packs are generally a monogamous pair with their recent offspring.
And feral cats certainly form colonies, though it seems like what research there is has the primary cat social groups being a female and her young and extending from there to multiple females and their young.[2]
Really for both wolves/dogs and cats it seems like environment strongly influences social behavior and there is a large amount of variance.
"Pack living offers a better platform for coordination and training hence dogs are more motivated to learn tricks" does not require a strict dominance hierarchy as was once erroneously thought to exist.
> Wolf packs are generally a monogamous pair with their recent offspring.
Larger packs have been observed in Yellowstone. I think it’s largely a function of prey density. In a case where family packs merge into a larger pack I imagine somehow the animals work out who the leader is as a necessary condition for cooperation.
I think the point is that when cats were intentionally bred, it was for appearance. The natural selection of feral/domestic non-bred cats took its own course.
Cats have been following people around for millennia whereas “breeding“ is more of a last couple centuries thing. Some breeds do have personality differences like ragdolls. They’re also generally harder to breed because they’re more likely to crossbreed with wild cats-which is how we think we got Maine coons.
+1...but most farmers I've known who did have "barnyard" cats seemed quite aware of which cats were or were not good at vermin control. None of the farmers have (that I've heard) "intentionally bred" barnyard cats. But they may not hesitate to, ah, "strongly influence" which barnyard cats enjoy reproductive success. Sometimes in ways which non-farmers with pet cats might prefer not to hear about.
That’s their behavior when a kitten needs to learn to hunt and kill. They’re literally saying they’ve never seen you hunt and kill prey so they want you to learn.
It's possible it's both. Natural instinct to bring prey animals for the kitten so it learns might have been adopted to gives proofs to humans that cat serves useful purpose.
My wife used to have one day a week when a succession of music students would come to the house. She insists that on that specific day of the week her cats would line the front path with "offerings" for the expected visitors. They had a keen sense of hospitality.
My semi-barn cat would present me with mouse entrails; arranged like an anatomical model. Once he even presented them on a bed of grass like a fancy chef! He had to bring the blades of grass up a cat ramp and through a cat door. I think he'd predict when I would visit so as to have a display ready for me. Once I came early and a lot more mouse was present, but I came back in a bit and it was just entrails.
Although he has been spending a lot of time in the house this winter, and it's been months since I've gotten a present.
Back in the day (~1930), my grandparents had a "semi-pet" rat terrier (a small working dog), and kept a fair number of animals (chickens, a few pigs, cow, etc.). When the rat terrier was feeling ignored/unloved, it would head back to the barn and start hunting rats. Lots of rats. Which were all brought back up to the house (dead), and lined up on the little walk to the kitchen door - for grandma to notice, and happily fuss over the dog for having killed.
When the dog was not feeling insecure/unappreciated, it didn't seem all that interested in hunting rats.
Anectodal, but I’ve have many cats over the years. The two Maine coons I’ve had (unrelated to each other) were by far the least intelligent in my opinion and observation. All the others have been mixes.
You're reading the sentence incorrectly, regarding the order of the focusing adverb, solely. The meaning changes depending on the adverb's placemment. For ex: "bred solely for appearance" does not mean the same as "solely bred for appearance" in the context of the full sentence. [1]
That first picture of a kitten in a maze reminded me of my A-level (final year pre-university, for non-UK people) Bio project on animal learning. I used gerbils (too scared to use rats) but I can assure people that whatever the animal, the trick is working how to keep the little bastards in the maze, not how to train them.
My cat, Felix, brought his iPad pro from the other room, logged into HN (because Felix doesn't trust persistent logins), read the article to me, then discussed the implications before demanding I open the door for him, because he is a cat and doesn't want to open the door himself.
There's a Facebook profile for probably just about every human alive, but that doesn't mean just about every human alive is on Facebook. Some shadow profiles get more intensive curation than others, is all.
Cats all hang out on the dark web using things like TOR and tails OS, which is a portable operating system that protects against surveillance and censorship. [1]
Great article, other comments have already covered my main thoughts
But those sound boards that let pets communicate with words and concatenate have been okay at helping me move past our tests of intelligence. We cant even communicate with other humans that cant dont talk back or use fingers.
I’m also less convinced that human behaviors are not just reward seeking patterns chained together, so I cant dismiss a pet’s use of a sound board as just trained behavior for a treat - at least as a reason to dismiss their intelligence or weigh that action any way at all
I would say its evidence of understanding and that the animal is aware that they cannot use their vocal cords to respond to us and just give up trying that
My calico understands that the laser pointer is the object that causes the red dot to appear, and would paw at it when she would want to play with the red dot.
The key word in the above three posts might be “she” - my two female cats seem much more intelligent and playful than the male ones. (Perhaps because as adults they have to mother and train kittens, unlike more the solitary males?)
I’m puzzled the above comment is being downvoted. Wild feline species are often social for groups of females, and solitary for males. They’re instinctual rather than (like us) cultural animals - it’s entirely possible that male and female domestic cats exhibit different types of social intelligence and playfulness with respect to each other and to humans, and as I said, my (five!) do.
My most recent one never bothered with that - intuiting when he wished to play and fulfilling the resulting obligation was my job, and it doesn't do to get too indiscriminately familiar with the help - but he did learn not just what the laser pointer was and looked like, but what the tactile switch under its "on" button sounded like. I liked to sneak the dot up on him when I could, but it very soon became a game of "how quietly can I actuate the switch?" versus "how faint a click can he hear?" - a game I rarely won, especially once he further learned to recognize the distinctive rattle of the batteries moving in the laser pointer case! There are probably bombs easier to defuse than it eventually became to retrieve and activate the laser stealthily enough for the dot to come as a surprise - if nothing else, it was a great opportunity to find out how much I've really learned from a lifetime spent mostly in company with cats.
The thing about tact switches, though, is that they all generally sound quite alike, and he was used to not immediately seeing the dot when he heard one. So, through the latter decade or so of this cat's life, it was quite common for the following sequence of events to play out several times a day:
- I adjust the volume on my phone;
- the cat glances excitedly around the floor, then expectantly at me;
- I hold up the phone for him to see;
- the cat and I simultaneously settle back to what we were doing before.
My dog and both cats still like to play with the laser pointer, but all of them know exactly where it comes from. Thankfully it's just like playing fetch with the dog. Totally repetitive and predictable but still entertaining enough that the pet will keep it up indefinitely.
Please, never use a laser pointer to play with dogs. This can cause anxiety, OCD and ultimately lead to serious harm. A frustrated dog may keep searching for the pointer for weeks after. There is a name for the condition, "laser pointer syndrome". Laser pointers are fine with cats but a big no with dogs.
Heh, my dog has never gotten that wrapped up in laser pointer chasing. She knows it's me, she stops when I say 'Done'. Now, when it comes to chuckit balls on the other hand, she's dangerously close to real OCD.
Tulie does the same thing. I used to keep the laser pointer at the side of my desk mixed in with a pile of USB sticks and such. She would get pretty excited when she saw me reach over there. If I was just grabbing a USB stick she would walk away.
Eventually she started jumping onto that corner of the desk to knock the USB sticks on the floor. After all, if I wasn't going to play laser tag with her, a USB stick makes a mighty fine cat toy!
Interesting that yours is a calico. Tulie is a tortoiseshell, which is basically the same thing without the white background.
They are often intelligent enough to actively resist intelligence tests, unlike too many humans who click through any and all "only some% know this, do you?" marketing/pii-harvesting rubbish.
Cats also show a form of... empathy? Consideration?
One of my cats wakes me up every day around 5-6AM to get food. She does so by making just enough noise to wake me up, but not my partner (she's doing it on my side of the bed, etc). She also does that when she's not hungry, but her sister is.
That sounds about right. :)
I have two very smart cats myself. 16 years old now though, so mostly sleeping.
One of them loves snuggling up in my armpit in my office bed, and will get really upset when I don't come at his calling. Burmese can truly get vocal.
My orange boy is an absolute sweetheart except for at 5am when he's hungry. He will sit right by my head and moan like he's dying until I get up. If I don't get up fast enough he'll start pawing at my toes.
We had a wonderful cat when I was a kid, and she definitely showed something like empathy - whenever one of us was sad or hurt, she would come over and rub up against you, making a very particular mewling sound that almost sounded like she was hurt.
> Other tests include the ability to learn and remember. Is the ability to learn by rote a sign of intelligence? If so, any avian mimic is intelligent.
I would argue this shouldnt just be dismissed like that. I would argue that mimicking is a sign of intelligence - The fact that a toddler can mimic an animal, even if that animal has vastly different anatomy, seems very intelligent. It suggests an understanding of the similarities between function of body parts, even if the form differs significantly. Why would an avian mimic not be a sign of significant intelligence, such as understanding vocalizations and how they happen? A bird rarely has to sit there for hours trying random sounds to mimic another sound, it understand and knows what to do, does it not?
Bird species that mimic tend to be considered the most intelligent ones by other factors as well (corvids, parrots). That dismissal seems quite ignorant.
My family's African Grey mimics telephone sounds, sirens, and human voices and phrases. But he does it mainly to fuck with everyone and will literally laugh after fooling someone. If an animal enjoys messing with another animal, is that a sign of intelligence?
I'm not sure whether liking it is a sign of intelligence, but I'd say that you certainly have to be intelligent to be able to intentionally fool someone this way.
Having spent the past three years observing two quite different cats who came into my life via a relationship, I'd say the answer is "eh, a little".
One of them has learnt to do basic tricks for treats, and has also learned to turn on two different robot hoovers by pressing the right button - she only does this late at night, which I take either as attention-seeking or just boredom? The other one is the Zoolander of cats.
Beyond this, they seem quite limited: sleep, eat, wander around, watch the world go by, occasionally hang out with us, sometimes play or hunt.
Or a teenager for sleeping and playing videogames. The only difference is time horizon, which you introduced I suppose for the sake of your own argument? No idea how old these cats are.
My mother has degree in behavioral biology (though rather old one, she got diploma in 1980, in USSR), and her first job after university was "surgically intrusive experiments to assess learning and intelligence" in cats.
She abandoned this work after half a year, because she thinks it was too cruel to animals.
Her career was ruined, as in USSR you was unable to easily quit your job in first 3 years after university, you have to work for 3 years on assigned job, to "pay out" your education. As result all her subsequent jobs were low-wage ones, like typist, nurse, and sometimes cleaner or dishwasher. Only after the fall of USSR my father started successful software business (we didn't know word "start-up" till much later) which allows my mother to not work anymore.
But as far as I know, she never regret her decision.
I too have a family member who turned down top research positions in genomics and forensics stateside because it would mean dissecting cats. She never regretted it either.
As I sit here reading HN and watching two gray squirrels play in my front yard - I think this is very much a "cultural norm" thing, and not inherent.
When I was in high school I did a science fair project that involved mice. Honestly it was mostly because my school tried to discourage us from using live subjects and I felt the need to push the boundaries. One of the hoops I had to jump through was to present the proposal to the IRB at a local community college. One of the IRB's requirements was to define the disposition of the mice after the project was complete. I decided to keep them as pets. Those mice lived an additional three years if memory serves, and they were every bit as suitable as pets as hamsters, reptiles, or similar small animals.
The squirrels in my yard are basically outdoor pets - we regularly have a suet cake hung in their trees, and I made a permanent feeder for them that's kept full year-round. Our squirrels are... rotund. The ones I'm watching now are very young, and are the third generation that have lived on our property since we moved in.
In the fall, I hunt squirrels with my daughters. They're small enough that they're consumed in one or two meals so nothing goes to waste, and they're intelligent enough that they're very difficult to hunt effectively. We don't shoot the ones in our yard, though. Those are pets.
It’s neotenisation of animals features..especially domesticated animals. Cats are an exception..dogs have eyebrows..cats don’t!..they didn’t have to evolve to look like our young.
We are often protective towards faces that look like our young. It’s hard coded for most creatures. Big eyes, flat side profile and reduction in size of the skulls. Tugging human heart strings means they don’t have to compete for food resources. Domesticated animals also exhibit this with behaviour as well as physical features. Cats..for example.. can be rather aloof ..until they need you. They are absolutely affectionate fur balls.
We don’t play hide and seek..and fetch with adults but we do with children and our pets. They become child substitutes and satisfies a very primal caregiving instinct in humans who may not be able to express it with other humans.
Also..this is why psychopaths start early with torturing and killing animals. It’s an early warning sign to lock these people up and throw the keys away.
Note that if you actually read the wikipedia article you linked, more recent studies found that the effects of previous studies are not supported by evidence, and found this with an extremely high P-value.
You're also more likely to get the parasite from handling raw pork than cats, and indoor cats are entirely unaffected.
This parasite makes mice (not humans!) a slightly less averse to light and feline scent, noting more. I don't think we can attribute love for cats to toxoplasma, it is too far-fetched.
I agree. But it’s more than being slightly averse..it makes the mice suicidal. The first time I heard about suicidal rodents and how cats hunt them with their Trojan parasitic poo was on the discover channel..they had set to a night vision camera and recorded the whole thing. I don’t even know if the channel or magazine exists anymore..
I have also seen this in snakes that ‘mesmerize’ mice ..predators know how to paralyze their prey.
I have read the full piece but now it’s not accessible without subscription..
[..] A mouse sniffs the air, catches the whiff of cat urine, and runs towards the source of the smell… and straight into the jaws of a cat. This bizarre suicidal streak is the work of a single-celled parasite called Toxoplasma gondii, which has commandeered the mouse’s brain and turned it into a Trojan rodent—a vehicle for sneaking T.gondii into a cat.[..]
[..] T.gondii (or Toxo for short) infects a wide variety of mammals, but it only completes its life cycle in the guts of a cat. To get there, Toxo has ways of subverting the behaviour of dead-end hosts like mice. Its machinations are subtle, so subtle that it’s normally hard to tell an infected mouse from an uninfected one. But the difference becomes obvious when there’s cat pee in the air. Normal mice, even lab-born ones that have never met a cat, have an innate fear of cat smells. Those infected with Toxo do not. They (and their parasites) are more likely to end up in a cat.
Toxo also influences the brain of Wendy Ingram from the University of California at Berkeley. She has long been obsessed with the brain and fascinated by Toxo’s dominion over it. “I was struck by the idea that a single celled parasite ‘knows’ more about our brains than we do,” she says. [..]
When I was young, we had a cat that would sit down next to me as I was sitting in front of the PC, and start meowing. I would pet her head, and she would move away, a meter or so an continue meowing until I got up and petted her again.
Step by step, she would lure me all the way to the kitchen and give me a look said that, "Now that we are here anyway, how 'bout some of that food?". A bit manipulative, I admit, but kind of clever.
Also, I suspect cats tricked humans into starting agriculture so they (the cats) would have a steady supply of mice.
I know that certain “redditisms” like “username checks out” probably don’t fly here…but seeing someone named “RobWilliams” responding positively to a cat joke just puts a warm smile on my face.
A reply from cstross! That's it, I'm done for the day. Doesn't get better than that. Thanks for all the great books!
Side note: I think Peter Watts is also a "cat person". Something about cat people must contribute to them being some of my favorite writers. Which is odd, since I'm more of a dog person. Maybe if I wrote fiction I would hate what I wrote. And Amazon should include a "author pet preference" as filterable criteria when searching for books. If Greg Egan likes cats that would make for a trifecta.
Now that is indeed a profound insight on what is deemed intelligence. If the “Observer” in unable to comprehend the article objectives of the subjects, how will the fulfillment of the objectives ever be recognized as intelligence?
Decades ago, I read some article on how people with more than 30 IQ points of separation, effectively were incomprehensible to each other. Whether it is true or not, it also highlights a fallacy that the superior intellect can somehow “emulate/simulate” the lesser, and thereby understand the person.
If your IQ is very high or very low, you likely have not spent a whole lot of time practicing things and pursuing things that typical people have. So the shared social language and thread of common experience that people depend upon to relate is limited.
Hmm, I think it's possible to raise your IQ by practicing and applying certain thinking strategies. Especially given that IQ is an artificial measure of intelligence.
Like any target, when it becomes a target, ceases to be a good measure. But I remember some of the parts. most where pattern matching. or memory retention.
Most humans cannot get better at this easily at least. You can always try...
On working memory, I think the average is 7, or something like that, Try to remember a number in inversed order and see if you get past that to 9-10 that´s pretty hard to learn too
I remember the day our class was asked about a dice. I was the only know that knew by observation the response to which number was under the dice not being visible.
I now want to take a standardized IQ test, three times - once with sober, once mildly intoxicated by cannabis, and as intoxicated as possible while still being able to focus on the questions.
I'm very confident that the time it would take me to answer a given question would increase about linearly with my level of intoxication, but I'm not at all confident that I would arrive at a different conclusion.
> Decades ago, I read some article on how people with more than 30 IQ points of separation, effectively were incomprehensible to each other.
It’s more like “fundamentally perceive the world in a different way”, and generally leads to a lack of empathy towards the other group due to this difference of perception.
This is one reason why, at least until recently, US generals were not known for their high IQ.
A lot of marriages are this way and do fine. A diverse but comprehensive worldview is helpful when operating as a singular unit. You can be smart and ignorant at the same time in some ways, and that's okay.
When I lived in Asia I "adopted" a lost kitten near my house. As I now had cat food in the house, the local streetcats know how to find me!
I had these two little kitten siblings; no idea where their mother was but they hung around the house, because food. If the food was out they would meow and whine for food, so I would get up to bring them food and they would hiss at me for getting too close to the food bowl before I even had a chance to put any food in.
I never thought that was especially intelligent; "biting the hand that feeds you" and all that.
After dealing with many cats for two years I don't rate cats as very high on the intelligence department. They're basically autistic dogs. They are cuter though. And they don't eat poop off the street.
We had two cats, a tortoise-shell and a tabby. The tortoise-shell would come running when it was time for dinner, and the tabby would take his time. Once, I noticed that the tortoise-shell kept switching back and forth between dishes until the tabby got there, and I wondered why. It was probably so she could eat as much from both plates before having to finally commit to one. Kinda clever for a cat, in my opinion :)
anecdotal corroboration: my cat recognizes and responds to 5-6 different words/phrases for food, even from a visitor, but does not understand a single other word in any language spoken in the house: food, snack, treat, cookie, nom-nom. he responds to each of these uniquely (we use them to refer to different things he can eat).
Alternate hypothesis: your cat has a fluent understanding of the English language, and has a vocabulary as large as yours - but he doesn't deign to care about words that don't relate to your purpose (i.e., providing food).
even round knobs aren't safe. i had a pair that would work together: one jumping to turn the knob while the other stuck their paw under the door and pulled.
My cat would smack the metal blinds when he got stuck in my bedroom with me while I’m sleeping.
I just love how he knew that I was sleeping and found out how to make the loudest possible sound in my house, all while staring at me of course, without even having to raise his voice.
One of my cats observed my partner turning a doorknob on the bedroom door and subsequently started jumping and pawing the doorknob when the door was closed and they wanted in. No question that if it was a handle-type knob he’d have gotten in.
One of my cats, who is going on 13-14 years old (he was a stray, not sure of his exact age) has a specific pitched meow for when he wants me to do something for him.
He'll use that, combined with lifting one paw off of the ground to "ask" me to do something for him.
Once I follow him, he'll nudge his head in the direction of what he wants. The sink? He wants to drink out of the faucet. The counter? He wants treats out of the drawer. The pantry? He wants food. If he just sits there and cries I know he wants to be pet.
Omg this is the situation my cat, but instead of food it's for laying down with him and cuddling. He'll jump on the couch or bed, stare and/or meow until I lay with him.
There is no theory of mind, it's a redundant concept. Apes can predict the actions of others as agents of the environment without needing an abstract understanding of what a mind is. Cats are probably able to achieve similar feats. Understanding that other beings and yourself have 'minds' only becomes relevant when the entity in question achieves a certain complexity of language.
If me and a cat were thrown into random woods my money would be on the cat surviving for longer period. I think humans are pretty fit in groups, but cats are functional enough to make it on their own.
I think human style intelligence we appreciate so highly is useful mostly in relation to other humans.
We have a cat and a border collie, we love them both to the moon and back. That said, me and my SO both agree that our cat is "smarter" than our dog, he (meaning the cat) "invents" games with our dog which the latter very heartily "adopts" but, nevertheless, are not "invented" by him (by the dog).
Also, our dog being a BC that means that, at times, he wants to herd our cat, after long bouts of staring at said cat. In response to all that the cat has invented and performed very smart avoidance techniques that he hadn't use with us before the BC came into our life (the cat was with us first, for about two years).
And that's just two quick things that sprung to my mind on learning the article, there are many others. There's also the misconception of "cats don't love/care about their owners" which is just a stupid stereotype.
There is at least one [0] myth that has never had scientific standing or proof stated as factual in that article, so take it with a grain of salt. Several other statements seem iffy to me but I do not know enough those specific subjects to know for sure.
This cat can communicate not only specific wants, but feelings and abstract concepts such as the passing of time. She also likes to plan her play and cuddles ahead of time and will remind her owner with ”later” if it’s not yet that time.
There is a lot of ‘wild’ left even in domesticated cats compared to dogs. Any animal that still retains the instinct to hunt for survival has to be intelligent. Since the time of pyramids and pharaohs, cats have remained wild and have domesticated the humans.
What we now know as domesticated cats have extra special set of skills..they know how to create and retain memories. They understand reward based stimuli.
There has been enormous research done in the field of cat genetics. UC Davis leads with the cat genetics lab and esp for their work on cat coat genetics.
But we also know what genes changed and evolved for their intelligence as they morphed from feral to domestic.
The most relevant one to intelligence are glutamate receptors that aids learning and memory. Domesticated animals have evolved to developed more coat variations and pigmentations than wild animals. This is why you don’t find a calico tiger but not only are there calico cats, but we also know that their genes guarantee that almost all are also female. Male calicos are sterile and short lived.
It is in the area of cat coat genetics that UC Davis VGL has made enormous strides. There are five key traits that facilitate domestication and one of them is the wide variability in pigmentation/texture of coats.
Even though cats have been around humans, they were allowed to be ‘wild’ and have resisted the intense pressure to adapt for full on domestication.
In a way, they have been more useful in agrarian societies in their undomesticated state and largely due to their hunting instincts…..which once tamed and trained is no longer as effective. Hunting rodents is a far different job that herding docile domesticated sheep.
[..] Cats, as a class, have never completely got over the snootiness caused by the fact that in Ancient Egypt they were worshipped as gods.[..] - P.G.Wodehouse.
All of my favourite authors are cat slaves.. notably adore their extensive cat quotes..Heinlein, Mark Twain..and of course, P.G.Wodehouse
and not to forget the illustrator of my namesakes..Edward Gorey
Agreed with the article. Also I was slightly disappointed with my cat when I thought her to look into inside the house and meow at something for months as speaking to something that I can't see, only to realize that she was seeing reflection of some birds on a light pole and was talking to them, thinking that they are inside the house.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 262 ms ] threadIn the past this trainability was associated with intelligence but modern studies indicate trainability and intelligence are not correlated as closely as we used to think.
In short: you train a dog, your cat trains you aka the old joke about dogs having masters and cats having staff is probably true.
"Because we judge intelligence by comparing other creatures to ourselves, many popular accounts of cat behaviour describe learning as though cats are mentally defective humans rather than highly specialised carnivores."
https://www.peta.org/features/uw-madison-cruelty/
"How the whale got his throat" is still the house favorite, but as an adult, man, did i laugh a lot harder at "the butterfly that stamped".
Wolf packs are generally a monogamous pair with their recent offspring.
And feral cats certainly form colonies, though it seems like what research there is has the primary cat social groups being a female and her young and extending from there to multiple females and their young.[2]
Really for both wolves/dogs and cats it seems like environment strongly influences social behavior and there is a large amount of variance.
[1] https://phys.org/news/2021-04-wolf-dont-alpha-males-females.... [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7149619/
Larger packs have been observed in Yellowstone. I think it’s largely a function of prey density. In a case where family packs merge into a larger pack I imagine somehow the animals work out who the leader is as a necessary condition for cooperation.
“Whereas dogs have been bred for utility, cats have been bred solely for appearance.”
My understanding was cats largely served as pest control from the human perspective. It’s probably why they continue to hunt even when well fed.
I mean, probably not, but wahtever.
Although he has been spending a lot of time in the house this winter, and it's been months since I've gotten a present.
When the dog was not feeling insecure/unappreciated, it didn't seem all that interested in hunting rats.
[1] https://www.vocabulary.com/articles/wc/adverb-placement-gene...
We know that dogs were definitely bred for utility.
But cats were already effective pest controllers and may simply have moved in with humans after being tolerated.
Cats never needed selective breeding for the jobs they already did; they definitely have been bred for appearance more recently.
Cats all hang out on the dark web using things like TOR and tails OS, which is a portable operating system that protects against surveillance and censorship. [1]
[1] https://tails.boum.org/
But those sound boards that let pets communicate with words and concatenate have been okay at helping me move past our tests of intelligence. We cant even communicate with other humans that cant dont talk back or use fingers.
I’m also less convinced that human behaviors are not just reward seeking patterns chained together, so I cant dismiss a pet’s use of a sound board as just trained behavior for a treat - at least as a reason to dismiss their intelligence or weigh that action any way at all
I would say its evidence of understanding and that the animal is aware that they cannot use their vocal cords to respond to us and just give up trying that
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46rROBUDPYI
I was playing with them with a bird wand toy and then I wanted to get back to work. So I wedged the toy's handle in the chair.
Tulie had studied how I operated the toy, and she decided to work it herself to keep Sephie entertained.
At one point the feathers got stuck on the chair, and Tulie figured out how to unstick them!
Then the dogs came by to get some water, and the cats were like "nothing to see here, move along now."
And then with the dogs out of the way, they got back to business.
Cats pay attention and put things together!
The thing about tact switches, though, is that they all generally sound quite alike, and he was used to not immediately seeing the dot when he heard one. So, through the latter decade or so of this cat's life, it was quite common for the following sequence of events to play out several times a day:
- I adjust the volume on my phone;
- the cat glances excitedly around the floor, then expectantly at me;
- I hold up the phone for him to see;
- the cat and I simultaneously settle back to what we were doing before.
Confused the hell out of a boyfriend one time.
We got a timer and set it to chime when the feeder went off, which helped.
The feeder has an app that triggers an alert on my phone and now if my phone makes that alert sound, they perk up and bolt to the basement.
So they’ve also learned to associate the alert sound to food….
Eventually she started jumping onto that corner of the desk to knock the USB sticks on the floor. After all, if I wasn't going to play laser tag with her, a USB stick makes a mighty fine cat toy!
Interesting that yours is a calico. Tulie is a tortoiseshell, which is basically the same thing without the white background.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortoiseshell_cat
One of my cats wakes me up every day around 5-6AM to get food. She does so by making just enough noise to wake me up, but not my partner (she's doing it on my side of the bed, etc). She also does that when she's not hungry, but her sister is.
If you're working from home, there's a good chance you're doing so from a spare bedroom, as they're convenient places to double as an office.
If you have a laptop and a split keyboard, all you need to add for a pretty comfortable lying-down workstation is a lap desk with decent clearance.
I found this one worked well during surgery recovery:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B091CB1RDB
The other cat - of course, orange one - wakes me by trying to totally destroy something.
> Other tests include the ability to learn and remember. Is the ability to learn by rote a sign of intelligence? If so, any avian mimic is intelligent.
I would argue this shouldnt just be dismissed like that. I would argue that mimicking is a sign of intelligence - The fact that a toddler can mimic an animal, even if that animal has vastly different anatomy, seems very intelligent. It suggests an understanding of the similarities between function of body parts, even if the form differs significantly. Why would an avian mimic not be a sign of significant intelligence, such as understanding vocalizations and how they happen? A bird rarely has to sit there for hours trying random sounds to mimic another sound, it understand and knows what to do, does it not?
For instance, my experience is that they can quickly understand the function of a door handle and even learn to operate it in order to open the door.
One of them has learnt to do basic tricks for treats, and has also learned to turn on two different robot hoovers by pressing the right button - she only does this late at night, which I take either as attention-seeking or just boredom? The other one is the Zoolander of cats.
Beyond this, they seem quite limited: sleep, eat, wander around, watch the world go by, occasionally hang out with us, sometimes play or hunt.
A 16 year old cat deserves to do whatever the hellz it wants.
But as far as I know, she never regret her decision.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuteness https://www.bbcearth.com/news/the-code-for-cuteness
When I was in high school I did a science fair project that involved mice. Honestly it was mostly because my school tried to discourage us from using live subjects and I felt the need to push the boundaries. One of the hoops I had to jump through was to present the proposal to the IRB at a local community college. One of the IRB's requirements was to define the disposition of the mice after the project was complete. I decided to keep them as pets. Those mice lived an additional three years if memory serves, and they were every bit as suitable as pets as hamsters, reptiles, or similar small animals.
The squirrels in my yard are basically outdoor pets - we regularly have a suet cake hung in their trees, and I made a permanent feeder for them that's kept full year-round. Our squirrels are... rotund. The ones I'm watching now are very young, and are the third generation that have lived on our property since we moved in.
In the fall, I hunt squirrels with my daughters. They're small enough that they're consumed in one or two meals so nothing goes to waste, and they're intelligent enough that they're very difficult to hunt effectively. We don't shoot the ones in our yard, though. Those are pets.
We are often protective towards faces that look like our young. It’s hard coded for most creatures. Big eyes, flat side profile and reduction in size of the skulls. Tugging human heart strings means they don’t have to compete for food resources. Domesticated animals also exhibit this with behaviour as well as physical features. Cats..for example.. can be rather aloof ..until they need you. They are absolutely affectionate fur balls.
We don’t play hide and seek..and fetch with adults but we do with children and our pets. They become child substitutes and satisfies a very primal caregiving instinct in humans who may not be able to express it with other humans.
Also..this is why psychopaths start early with torturing and killing animals. It’s an early warning sign to lock these people up and throw the keys away.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii
You're also more likely to get the parasite from handling raw pork than cats, and indoor cats are entirely unaffected.
I have also seen this in snakes that ‘mesmerize’ mice ..predators know how to paralyze their prey.
But this turned up as more recent and is closer to the Trojan suicide prodding parasite.. https://api.nationalgeographic.com/distribution/public/amp/s...
I have read the full piece but now it’s not accessible without subscription..
[..] A mouse sniffs the air, catches the whiff of cat urine, and runs towards the source of the smell… and straight into the jaws of a cat. This bizarre suicidal streak is the work of a single-celled parasite called Toxoplasma gondii, which has commandeered the mouse’s brain and turned it into a Trojan rodent—a vehicle for sneaking T.gondii into a cat.[..]
[..] T.gondii (or Toxo for short) infects a wide variety of mammals, but it only completes its life cycle in the guts of a cat. To get there, Toxo has ways of subverting the behaviour of dead-end hosts like mice. Its machinations are subtle, so subtle that it’s normally hard to tell an infected mouse from an uninfected one. But the difference becomes obvious when there’s cat pee in the air. Normal mice, even lab-born ones that have never met a cat, have an innate fear of cat smells. Those infected with Toxo do not. They (and their parasites) are more likely to end up in a cat. Toxo also influences the brain of Wendy Ingram from the University of California at Berkeley. She has long been obsessed with the brain and fascinated by Toxo’s dominion over it. “I was struck by the idea that a single celled parasite ‘knows’ more about our brains than we do,” she says. [..]
Step by step, she would lure me all the way to the kitchen and give me a look said that, "Now that we are here anyway, how 'bout some of that food?". A bit manipulative, I admit, but kind of clever.
Also, I suspect cats tricked humans into starting agriculture so they (the cats) would have a steady supply of mice.
Side note: I think Peter Watts is also a "cat person". Something about cat people must contribute to them being some of my favorite writers. Which is odd, since I'm more of a dog person. Maybe if I wrote fiction I would hate what I wrote. And Amazon should include a "author pet preference" as filterable criteria when searching for books. If Greg Egan likes cats that would make for a trifecta.
No way to do that the other way around.
If your IQ is very high or very low, you likely have not spent a whole lot of time practicing things and pursuing things that typical people have. So the shared social language and thread of common experience that people depend upon to relate is limited.
Most humans cannot get better at this easily at least. You can always try...
On working memory, I think the average is 7, or something like that, Try to remember a number in inversed order and see if you get past that to 9-10 that´s pretty hard to learn too
I remember the day our class was asked about a dice. I was the only know that knew by observation the response to which number was under the dice not being visible.
PS They always add up to seven
YMMV
I had dice as a kid that did not follow this rule.
I now want to take a standardized IQ test, three times - once with sober, once mildly intoxicated by cannabis, and as intoxicated as possible while still being able to focus on the questions.
I'm very confident that the time it would take me to answer a given question would increase about linearly with my level of intoxication, but I'm not at all confident that I would arrive at a different conclusion.
It’s more like “fundamentally perceive the world in a different way”, and generally leads to a lack of empathy towards the other group due to this difference of perception.
This is one reason why, at least until recently, US generals were not known for their high IQ.
This should be:
… inability to empathize with…
Poor wording on my part.
I had these two little kitten siblings; no idea where their mother was but they hung around the house, because food. If the food was out they would meow and whine for food, so I would get up to bring them food and they would hiss at me for getting too close to the food bowl before I even had a chance to put any food in.
I never thought that was especially intelligent; "biting the hand that feeds you" and all that.
After dealing with many cats for two years I don't rate cats as very high on the intelligence department. They're basically autistic dogs. They are cuter though. And they don't eat poop off the street.
My cats often want to be fed or to go outside.
My one cat knows she can simply stare at me and I will get up and follow her.
Wheelchair-height handle-style doorknobs mean my cat goes wherever she wants whenever she wants.
Baby-proof door latches are my friend.
Doyoyoyoyoingggggg
Doyoyoyoyoyoyinnng
OK fine I'll open the door but this is the last time.
I just love how he knew that I was sleeping and found out how to make the loudest possible sound in my house, all while staring at me of course, without even having to raise his voice.
He'll use that, combined with lifting one paw off of the ground to "ask" me to do something for him.
Once I follow him, he'll nudge his head in the direction of what he wants. The sink? He wants to drink out of the faucet. The counter? He wants treats out of the drawer. The pantry? He wants food. If he just sits there and cries I know he wants to be pet.
No. That would require a theory of mind, intention to deceive and a lot of cognitive abilities that cats don't have.
The cat simply learned to walk you to the food bowl.
I think human style intelligence we appreciate so highly is useful mostly in relation to other humans.
Also, our dog being a BC that means that, at times, he wants to herd our cat, after long bouts of staring at said cat. In response to all that the cat has invented and performed very smart avoidance techniques that he hadn't use with us before the BC came into our life (the cat was with us first, for about two years).
And that's just two quick things that sprung to my mind on learning the article, there are many others. There's also the misconception of "cats don't love/care about their owners" which is just a stupid stereotype.
[0] https://sciencenorway.no/ulv/wolf-packs-dont-actually-have-a...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_ChDCS_z2o
Her favorite word? Mad.
What we now know as domesticated cats have extra special set of skills..they know how to create and retain memories. They understand reward based stimuli.
There has been enormous research done in the field of cat genetics. UC Davis leads with the cat genetics lab and esp for their work on cat coat genetics.
But we also know what genes changed and evolved for their intelligence as they morphed from feral to domestic.
The most relevant one to intelligence are glutamate receptors that aids learning and memory. Domesticated animals have evolved to developed more coat variations and pigmentations than wild animals. This is why you don’t find a calico tiger but not only are there calico cats, but we also know that their genes guarantee that almost all are also female. Male calicos are sterile and short lived.
It is in the area of cat coat genetics that UC Davis VGL has made enormous strides. There are five key traits that facilitate domestication and one of them is the wide variability in pigmentation/texture of coats.
Even though cats have been around humans, they were allowed to be ‘wild’ and have resisted the intense pressure to adapt for full on domestication.
In a way, they have been more useful in agrarian societies in their undomesticated state and largely due to their hunting instincts…..which once tamed and trained is no longer as effective. Hunting rodents is a far different job that herding docile domesticated sheep.
It certainly appears that way. Dignity in domestication. Psychologically, cats seem to have a very healthy sense of self-respect.
All of my favourite authors are cat slaves.. notably adore their extensive cat quotes..Heinlein, Mark Twain..and of course, P.G.Wodehouse
and not to forget the illustrator of my namesakes..Edward Gorey
And of course, even Spock approved.
If you look at the base sequences in their DNA you can clearly see whole runs that just spell out “CATCATCATCAT”.