Cats are smarter than they seem

Researchers from Japan conducted experimentto find out whether our tailed friends are able to associate words and images as deftly as babies or a typical smart dog do. Spoiler: the cats walked ahead of the dogs and babies a couple of steps ahead.

The first part of the experiment (or how they tested it all on cats)

To understand what's really going on in cats' furry heads, scientists have developed a technique called switched stimuli task — “stimulus switching task.” This is not the first time this technique has been used, it has already been used on babies and apparently works great. The idea is simple: cats are shown two combinations of “word + picture” – in our case, these were meaningless words like “parumo” and “keraru”, and images such as the sun and a cloud.

What did it all look like? Each cat was tested in a separate room – the experimenters tried to make everything as comfortable as possible for the furry participants. They were seated 30 centimeters from a laptop on which pictures and sounds were played. And if the cat suddenly decided that today was his day to “lie down and do nothing” (which is actually not uncommon), the experimenters simply placed the laptop right in front of him so that the cat could enjoy the show while lying down. On the screen, one of the pictures increased and decreased for 9 seconds while the word was sounded 4 times. There was an interval of only 1-2 seconds between attempts, so that the cats did not have time to be distracted by something more important – for example, their own tail.

After the habituation phase – where the cats were, as it were, “trained” to associate words with pictures, the testing phase began. This is where we tested whether our furry friends would notice if we changed the combination of words and images. Half of the cats were shown new combinations, while the other half were left with the old ones.

And this is what happened: cats turned out to be more observant than scientists expected! When the combinations were changed, they clearly kept their gaze on the screen longer, as if they were saying: “there’s clearly something wrong here.” This showed that they successfully linked words and images.

Second part of the experiment

But one experiment is not enough for cats. To make sure that this was not just an accident, scientists decided to conduct a second experiment. In it, they replaced human voices with mechanical sounds – something like beeps and electronic signals. How else can you be sure that cats react specifically to human speechand not to any noise?

Here the results were more interesting. Unlike the first part, the cats did not show the same interest in changes. This means that they were more likely to associate words and images when they heard human speech. They clearly didn't work out with mechanical sounds.

Besides this

The first part of the experiment involved 31 cats: 20 of them were boys, the rest were girls. Their ages varied, with the average age being about 3.5 years. And here's what's important: 23 of these cats lived in cat cafesand the rest are in ordinary houses. What's the point? Yes, it seems that these cats should behave differently, because cafe cats interact much more often with strangers, and domestic cats have a more limited social circle. But, as the results showed, there was no difference in their reaction. This means that the formation of word associations in cats is probably an innate ability, and not the result of experience communicating with people.

Final Thoughts

Just imagine – most cats only needed four attemptsto get used to the “picture + word” combination. In fact, they only received 9 seconds exposure for each picture-word pair, and this was enough for their brains to remember everything. In comparison, babies need a minimum four 20-second trialsto learn the same. It turns out that cats cope with this almost twice as fast!

Why is this happening? This is still unclear. Perhaps it's a matter of evolution: cats, as a species, have adapted to living with people and have developed the ability to quickly remember our signals. But to answer this question accurately, it is necessary to conduct research with wild cats or their closest relatives. Maybe this is the result of living together with us, or maybe it’s a feature of the cat family.

Or maybe they are just pretending to be lazy to lull our vigilance. In any case, it's time to admit: cats are not only experts at ignoring their slave owner, but also real champions of quick learning.

Takagi, S., Koyasu, H., Nagasawa, M. et al. Rapid formation of picture-word association in cats. Sci Rep 1423091 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-74006-2