We tested whether cats (Felis catus) could recognize human attentional states when begging for food from one of two unfamiliar actors. Cats were tested under three conditions that differed in the actors' actions: Visual only condition-the actor looking at the cat silently versus facing sideways silently; Visual and Auditory condition-the actor looking at and calling to the cat versus looking at the cat silently; and Auditory only condition-the actor facing down and calling to the cat versus facing down silently. In the Visual and Auditory condition, cats preferred the actor who was calling to them. In the Visual only and the Auditory only conditions, the cats showed no preference for the actors' attentional states. There was a modest difference in the preference between the Visual and Auditory condition and the Auditory only condition. These results suggest that cats can use vocal cues of attention toward them only in situations in which humans are looking at them.
Two of the most common nonhuman animals that interact with humans are domestic dogs (
Canis familiaris
) and cats (
Felis catus
). In contrast to dogs, the ability of domestic cats to communicate with humans has not been explored thoroughly. We used a habituation-dishabituation method to investigate whether domestic cats could discriminate human utterances, which consisted of cats’ own names, general nouns, and other cohabiting cats’ names. Cats from ordinary households and from a ‘cat café’ participated in the experiments. Among cats from ordinary households, cats habituated to the serial presentation of four different general nouns or four names of cohabiting cats showed a significant rebound in response to the subsequent presentation of their own names; these cats discriminated their own names from general nouns even when unfamiliar persons uttered them. These results indicate that cats are able to discriminate their own names from other words. There was no difference in discrimination of their own names from general nouns between cats from the cat café and household cats, but café cats did not discriminate their own names from other cohabiting cats’ names. We conclude that cats can discriminate the content of human utterances based on phonemic differences.
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