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Cats Can Recognize Their Own Names, Study Suggests (gizmodo.com)
AmiMoJo shares a report from Gizmodo: Plenty of cat owners will happily tell you their felines are capable of responding to their own names, but the scientific jury remains ambivalent on the matter. A fascinating new experiment suggests this might actually be true for some cats, and it's a capacity very much tied to the social environment in which the cat lives. The new research, published today in Scientific Advances, doesn't mean cats understand the human conception of a name, but it does show that at least some cats can distinguish their names from other words. Prior research has shown that cats can recognize human gestures, facial expressions, and vocal cues. Slashdot reader sciencehabit adds: Give this a shot at home: Say four random words to your cat -- separated by about 15 seconds -- with the same length and intonation as its name. Then say its actual name. If it swivels its ears or perks up its head, chances are it knows what you call it. That's essentially what researchers did in a new study. The scientists saw similar responses when the cat's name came after the names of other felines he lived with, or when a stranger spoke the words. The findings are the first to experimentally show that cats have some understanding of what we are saying to them, the team concludes.
This should come as no surprise to anyone who owns a cat.
My cats will come when they are called, if they feel like it. Sometimes they will run to the door then refuse to actually come in.
So yeah, they understand. They just probably dont give a shit about what you want.
Keep talking to the cat four times in a minute. On the fifth time, chances are you've started to upset it and its getting ready to go someplace else.
(anecdotal evidence ahead)
My experience is that the IQ bell curve in cats must look very interesting.
There are some crazy intelligent cats out there but a lot of them are dumb as dirt.
so that is quite an achievement. But they recognize the names only when you bring them food. And then they recognize any name as theirs.
Will the cats ever reveal the results of this experiment of theirs on humans who think they're "scientists"?
I have 2 cats. Both of them respond to their own names. In fact the dumber one responds to both names - I think she's just greedy.
The older male one is definitely smarter than the younger female one. He can understand when I point to something, to look at what I am pointing at rather than the tip of my finger - apparently this is something that about 30% of cats can do. The younger female cat seems pretty ambivalent on this gesture - sometimes she will stare intently at my finger, other times she appears to look at what I am pointing at.
The older male is very neurotic in general and appears to remember past (negative) events exceptionally well. The female cat is much more easy going - one time when she was a very young kitten I played with her with a rabbit fur toy and happened to be holding a metal pocket multi tool (like a pocketknife) in my hand which I accidentally dropped and it hit her smack on the head, enough to hurt her and cause her to run away. The next couple of times I played with her with the rabbit fur toy she was visibly apprehensive, because she remembered being hit on the head. Now (2+ years later) I can play with her with that toy and she doesn't hesitate or worry at all, whereas the older neurotic male cat seems to recall every bad experience he has ever had and will sometimes cower when I approach him with my arms outstretched in the wrong way - he remembers past times where I applied flea medicine to the back of his neck which he hated.
I named my kitten 'Heygetoffofthere' but she never pays me no mind. Many animals can be conditioned to respond to a stimulus if there is a reward or punishment. Animal ears andbrains are not so different from humans, so why would cats not respond. My dog on the other hand gets confused with any word that sounds like his name.
A friend got drunk and booted his cat one night. For the next several months he had to sleep with his door shut. If the cat got in it would take a shit on his chest while he was sleeping. I am told it took him several months to get back on good terms with the cat. Lesson to be learned is that cats can have a good memory and understanding of their environment. They can also often tell the difference between human accidents and on purpose. Applying flea medicine is definitely on purpose so you should expect the cat to hold a grudge for a while.
Not necessarily.
They are recognising a sound that normally precedes things of interest to them... usually food.
For all we know, they think "Tiddles" means "I'm opening up a tin of meat for you". It only has to correlate enough for them to think it's worth getting their attention diverted to see if there's food, not every time.
Now, I did teach my cats words. They understand what those words mean and how they differ. They don't always know their own name, for example, and will ignore you calling them upstairs by it (food isn't served upstairs, so why would I wake up and run all the way up there?.
I teach my cats the word "down"... which discourages them off furniture, shelves, stairs, places they shouldn't be. They tend to get that.
They don't need an explicit word for food, they tend to go by the sound of the food bag/tin being opened, but using their name does reinforce that. When you want them to approach, you can try the name but what piques their interest is chirpy sounds or holding out your fingers... both food-related enticements. They won't approach if they know you haven't got food, unless they want a stroke but that's usually a side-effect of wanting to sit on you or be fed.
Some of them learned that me patting my lap means they are welcome to jump up but they struggle even with that.
Let's stop anthropomorphising them... they are little wild animals that have been given a privileged environment that they will defend if necessary, accept our presence in because we are much larger and more dangerous than them, have become accustomed to us generally being amenable to them being present, sometimes scent-mark us (especially to remember who fed them, usually), act like kittens in such an environment, and respond almost entirely only to food-based enticements.
That's not a bad thing. It's called a pet.
Though it is said that the greatest, most natural, and most clear signal of any species in terms of offering of peace is to give food. That's why you shouldn't refuse offers of dinner in foreign countries. Giving somebody food is the biggest signal you can offer in terms of acceptance, non-threatening, friendliness, sharing of vital resources, etc.
Seems to me a lot depends on what sort of clear rewards are consistently associated with using the name. If your cat responds otherwise to your body language, your tone of voice, its own inner beat, and other nonverbal cues such as smelling like tuna to come when you call, always or almost always hearing the same sound -- the kitty's name -- just before getting ear rubs, small nummies, and other fun stuff will naturally become linked over time to the clearly enunciated name. Given sufficient native feline intelligence and enough repetitions, the name alone will become enough. I actually did this with my own kitty many years ago when I last owned a cat, and it worked a treat. (I was careful though not to overuse the name -- "here, kitty-kitty" was enough for ordinary occasions.) This does take some work and patience, of course, but that's the root of all effective animal training -- patience and bribery.
I guess it's interesting in a nebbish researcher fashion to try to measure how much the overall social environment affects fuzz-butt psychology. Is a fairly noisy environment detrimental to this kind of training, such as a household with multiple kids or punk-rock musicians in development? A hammer factor with testing facilities? NASA's rocket launching facilities? An otherwise quiet campus with frat boys who love to belt out off-color songs every day at noon? What about dogs in the household -- does their constant nose-poking and butt-sniffing make learning names more difficult for cats? Just how terrible does a "terrible-twos" toddler have to be before the average kitty loses all ability to focus on anything but surviving from day to day? Just speculating on the possibilities.
A truly excellent pizza parlor is a delight unto the heavens. Treasure the sauce and the toppings!
Plenty of cat owners will happily tell you their felines are capable of responding to their own names, but the scientific jury remains ambivalent on the matter.Â
It sounds like the cats were the ones on this scientific jury.
This is what my cat thought his name was. He refused to answer to any other name.
ALL cats recognize their name. Whether they give a damn about you calling them is entirely another thing.
...which one of their three names can they recognize ?!?
>"Cats Can Recognize Their Own Names, Study Suggests"
Wow. I thought everyone knew this- at least anyone that has a cat (and bothers to interact with them regularly). What next? A study that says when a cat squints (slow blinks) at you or purrs it is happy? (Duh)
Cats are quite smart, fun, affectionate, and entertaining. They are just not slaves that hinge their entire self-worth on their owners... and that is one of the best things about them.
But we are NOT special. And that is OK.
Like it or not we are special. Look around, other animals might communicate and build nests but none in any thing like the way we have and it essentially comes down to flappy lips and opposable thumbs.
This world wasn't made for us but we have made it our own for better or worse.
Wanna buy a shirt?
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They just don't give a crap.
A friend of mine named his cat "DooDoo". He got it an engraved water and food dish, cat tags, accessories.
The cat died. He got a new cat, and since he already had the engraved accessories and already knew mentally that {"Cat" : "DooDoo"}, in a brilliant act of mental efficiency, named the new cat "DooDoo", with his thought being that onus was on the cat to figure out its name and since he bought the cat food he got to call the shots and he didn't want to have to learn a new cat name.
When I met him, he was probably on DooDoo v4 or v5.
Will he go as far as doodoo twotwo?
Wanna buy a shirt?
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Yes, our cats know their names.
Funny story, years ago my wife & I are in the computer room one evening (as usual) & Budapest, one of two cats comes running in meowing like crazy. It was like lassie trying to tell us that Timmy was stuck in the well. At the same time my wife & I say "Charlie fell of the balcony!". I go out & sure enough, I can hear him meowing somewhere below. We have a cat door in the screen because cats are a pain in the ass when it comes to doors.
Cats, dogs, even birds are smarter than many people give them credit for. Now days we have three cats & a dog. It's a lot of work but I feel our lives are much better due to the profound happiness these beasts give us.
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT
Plenty of cat owners will happily tell you their felines are capable of responding to their own names, but the scientific jury remains ambivalent on the matter.
No the "scientific jury" is not really in question here. You can train virtually any animal to come or do some actions on a cue. A name is just such a cue and pretty much any animal can be trained to recognize and perform an action in relation to their name. Animal handlers in zoos use this fact constantly. My wife took a graduate level training course at the Shedd Aquarium a few years ago. Some animals are easier to train than others but literally anyone who works with animals for a living will tell you that of course cats can be trained to perform an action in relation to their name and to recognize their name as a cue. The problem is that most people are very bad at training and give all sorts of confusing mixed messages about what the cue they are giving is supposed to mean. Think about how many people you see talking to their dogs or cats as if they actually speak human languages.
So yes, cats can recognize the sounds that we give them as a name and they can associate that with some actions we might ask them to perform. But its a mistake to think it should the same thing it does to a human. We as humans have been trained to respond to our names in certain ways and cats can be trained to have responses to their names too.
The new research, published today in Scientific Advances, doesn't mean cats understand the human conception of a name, but it does show that at least some cats can distinguish their names from other words.
If they think this is "new" or cutting edge research they are WAY behind the curve on animal training. Read some books like https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Sh...">Don't Shoot The Dog or watch some videos by a guy like Ken Ramirez.
In the words of writer David Gerrold: "All cats have the same name. It's pronounced exactly like the sound of a can opener."
My cats always came running when they heard it. :-)
https://www.smbc-comics.com/co...
It took many years, but one day I was having a phone conversation with my sister and the cat's name ("cat") came up in the middle of a sentence. Like "Yeah, I once had a cat like that". The point is that I wasn't calling her in a familiar voice, looking at her, and I didn't stress that word. It was in the middle of a sentence. Right after that word she looked up and meowed at me. At that point, I knew that she actually knew the word.
She was highly intelligent and had spent 7+ years living on her own outside after someone had apparently abandoned her. She knew how to catch food, but when I brought her inside she had no problem being inside, either, just always wanted to go back outside.
Do you have ESP?
Whenever anyone tells you dogs are smarter than cats, throw something and tell them to "go fetch". When they just look at you, ask them why they are acting like a cat.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
So as I always suspected, "NO!", "STOP!" and "GODDAMIT!" recognize their names, they're just ignoring me since they're assholes.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I call my cat Shikaka, this is going to be fun.
My monitor lizard (Varanus Rudicollis) knows his name, comes when called, and can count to 10 (the number of mice I feed him. If there are less, he'll hunt around for the remainder until he finds them.)
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
Except we're not the only one's with opposable thumbs so it can't be that. And African gray parrots certainly can do the talky, talky just fine so it's not that either.
This is research? Seriously? I was convinced this came from some crappy write-only journal, but...it comes from a Nature publication? That's just pathetic.
Ask any cat owner: of course cats recognize their names. Mine looks at you, to see what you want. If you say "come", then - guess what - she comes (well, most of the time, she is a cat after all). She also understands commands for simple tricks: sit, lie down, jump, etc.. And she's not any special breed, just an accident between two house cats.
Cats aren't as good with human languages as dogs, and they're a lot less interested in cooperating, but a small vocabulary is absolutely possible. Learning their own name? Well, duh. What a stupid research topic.
FWIW: Training cats to do tricks isn't hard, it just takes patience and perseverance. Start with hand signals, they come easier for the cat than words. But both are absolutely possible.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
I have deeper, more meaningful Conversations with my cat than I do with any humans:
Cats Can Recognize Their Own Names, Study Suggests
Cat aficionados who fancy themselves "scientists" are unable to recognize instances of operant conditioning when they see them.
For these cats, the sequence of sounds we humans call "their names" end up being followed by feeding, treats, petting, scritch-scratching, and warm, luxurious laps in which to relax and unwind from a stressful day of napping in the sunshine and occasionally trying to catch their arch-nemesis, that stupid glowing red dot... all good and pleasant things. Naturally, being living organisms, cats tend to gravitate towards that which is pleasant, and avoid that which is not. Having the collection of sounds that they hear right before something nice happens resulting in them tending to come to expect the same or similar when it happens again is just operant conditioning.
I propose a study to investigate the correlation between so-called scientists attributing to cats properties they may or may not have, with toxoplasmosis infection. If the parasite can make rats think cat piss smells good, it stands to reason that it might well result in "researchers" conducting "studies" concluding that cats are in various ways smarter or better than previously believed.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
As anyone who has been owned by cats knows.
Corporatism != Free Market
When we lived in the Ozark Mountains we knew a "turtle lady", whenever a box turtle was injured neighbours would take them to the Turtle Lady. She ended up with a collection of one eyed or three legged turtles as pets. As a demo she would line them up and ask you which one you wanted to come, she'd call it by name and it would come. Anyone who has owned two parrots will tell you they talk about the other one by name. Why not cats?
I knew this as 6 year old kid.
Why is this considered worthy of a study?
> I would beat the shit out of anyone I ever saw harming an animal
Fighting violence with *more* violence and assault?!
**Facepalm**
They also recognize when you meow in the same tone and pitch as they do. Posted as AC for obvious reasons.
Don't worry, your penis won't actually shrink if you stop being toxic and talk about something cute for 5 minutes.
Maybe the other animals have actually experienced everything we are doing/experiencing and decided, some million years ago, that the way of civilization is not really worth going. And then, maybe, just maybe, they decided to go back, leave civilization behind as the "wrong path" and go back to nature.
Maybe, in this sense, we are the dumbest of all species on this planet because we are way behind all of them and have to have this experience called "civilization" first...
Just sayin'...
While cats certainly recognize words, I have seen little evidence that they're aware of their name.
When you say "aware of their name", what do you mean exactly by that? Have you trained each of them that their name means something special in relation to them? They don't speak English or any other human language so expecting them to just figure it out without some work on the handler's part is absurdly naive. You can train a cat to respond to its name but it requires specificity and effort on the part of the handler to communicate this information.
A name to a cat is not anything special unless you tell them it should mean something specific. It's just a sound to them otherwise. They can recognize words (and other sounds), including their name, but they won't do anything unless a positive (or negative) association is drawn to that sound.
This world wasn't made for us but we have made it our own for better or worse.
How do you know it wasn't? You acknowledge that we are obviously special.
So we have 2 cats.
Cat A is a lean sleak hunter, who is older. She's very clever. She solves any cat toy or puzzle quickly and efficiently. When we were trying to control her food intake, she figured out how to open the door to the room where we were keeping food, went to the backside of the bag, ripped a small hole, and ate some; then left the room and closed the door after her. She did this for a week before she failed to close the door completely and we noticed. She sort of knows her name, and may just be responding to us using intonation.
Cat B is very food motivated, but easily fooled by puzzles. However, he knows his name, the other cat's name, the words "lunch", "treat", and "bed time"; and has a remarkable sense of time and our patterns of doing things. As an example, he gets fed his favorite wet food every day at 11:30am when I get lunch (I do remote work and keep a regular schedule). Starting at about 11am he makes sure to come in and lay wherever I am. If I get up any time start at about 11:25, and say a sentence with "unch" in it, he'll run to where his wetfood cans are stored in the kitchen and point at them. If I say his name instead, he'll get up, and watch where I'm walking to. If I don't say either of those words, he'll lay there and look dejected because I'm failing in my duties to provide him food. My partner has come in to the office at 11 and mentioned something about lunch, and cat B ran to the kitchen... Similarly he understands the word "treat", and if we say that in the dining room, he'll move towards the room where his treats are kept and then keep looking back at us to follow.
If you really want a reaction, say their true name...then watch out.
I used to work for a world-class audio expert. One time he and I were talking and he mentioned that cats hear very differently than humans do.
Cats can hear up into the ultrasonic. They can also hear sounds in the range audible to us. But he said that while their range is much wider, this has the tradeoff that it's more difficult for cats to tell the difference between some sounds that sound different to us.
The base set of sounds that we identify to distinguish words are called formants. He told me that cats have trouble distinguishing formants, but on the other hand they can track a mouse in 3D space by the mouse's heartbeat. (Consider how small a mouse heart is and then imagine the audio spectrum of its heartbeat.)
A cat can't respond differently to its name if it can't tell the difference between its name and some other word. I wonder if the researchers allowed for the physiology of cat hearing at all in their tests.
Now, this next part isn't anything the audio expert said, it's me trying to fill in the blanks with what I know.
The sound of the letter 's' (called a sibilant) is basically white noise and thus covers a lot of the spectrum. Thus I'm pretty sure cats can at least distinguish between sibilants and non-sibilants. My wife and I have two cats right now, and one of them is named "Saga" while the other is named "Harbard". I'm pretty sure that those names will sound different even to a cat.
But if we had third cat named "Samba", I'm not sure they would be physiologically able to distinguish that name from "Saga".
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
The mice won't allow it.
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -- HST
I never called my cat when I was putting out food.
I asked some friends and they said they hadn't thought about it, but they didn't call their cats either. It's probably because, as you say, there's no point in calling a creature that appears within seconds of your getting the food bag out and is already trying to shove you aside from the bowl.
My dogs were mind readers. They appeared underfoot if I even looked in the direction of the pantry. Come to think of it, the dogs were always underfoot.
OTOH, both the cats I had (different times) were self-adopting and probably lost pet cats. We didn't feed them for the first few months, but they decided they lived at our house and acted like pets whenever we came out. Eventually the smart one moved in to be a mostly inside cat. I suspect the were applying an "I'm a pet" template to us.
The smart one learned its name, the other did not. The one that learned its name would come when I went outside and called because it seemed to enjoy walking in the woods with me. Or sometimes I would call her, and she would call back and pretend that I needed to help her get out of the tree she was in. However, I had observed her running up and down trees like a squirrel when she didn't know I was watching. I have no idea what that was about.
I taught her one trick. I would say "squeal like a pig: and she would reliably meow in response. I offered no treats, I just told her good girl when she responded like I wanted, and soon we had a game to play.
Only my daughter uses her name, everyone else calls her asshole. Din, Din ASSHOLE!
"Plenty of cat owners will happily tell you their felines are capable of responding to their own names, but the scientific jury remains ambivalent on the matter."
I bet the dog researchers are far more enthusiastic about their research results.
I've had many cats over the last 40 years. It depends on their intelligence. Most recognize their name. Some don't at all. Some are REALLY intelligent enough to understand some english. I have a cat now that in addition to his name, he learned the words "food" and "hungry" to which he would respond by nudging his head against me, then lead me to his dish as I walked to the kitchen.
The smartest cat I ever owned actually understood English - I swear he did. I had stayed with my parents for a short while due to being displaced by a flood, and was talking to my mother about where I was going to move to. I looked at my cat and when I asked him if he would like to come with me, he reached up and nudged me in the face! My parents had this one cat who was really mean and was a real p!sser. I didn't like him, and neither did my cat. When I found my bedroom slippers soiled with cat urine, I banned that p!sser from my bedroom and told my parents that if my cat got in a fight with the p!sser that I was not going to stop him. And my cat was the reigning champion in the house. Well somehow my cat intuitively understood my wishes, and he guarded my bedroom from the p!sser. I actually witnessed this when the p!sser snuck in the room, unaware that I was laying on the bed. As he was about to crouch I warned him don't even think about it. He immediately turned to leave, and found himself face to face with my cat who snuck in behind him and had a serious look of disapproval on his face. My cat had an intimidating "look" that would command respect, I've seen it at work many times (he was a "shepherd cat" he could sense attitude and was not afraid to confront it, and was happy with other cats who were behaving). P!sser was so terrified that he attempted to go around him very slowly, and every few inches he advanced my cat moved to his lead. Over and over this happened until he reached the door. My cat was smart enough to know when he didn't have to fight, he knew his "look" was all he needed.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
Part of the introduction is missing:
After "Plenty of cat owners will happily tell you their felines are capable of responding to their own names"
it should read "...they just choose not to."
There, fixed that for ya.
A dog will eventually learn it's name. You can call your dog while it is playing with a pack of other dogs, and your dog will come.
Cats do not replicate this behavior.
I think you need to be more careful with your definitions. Taking as given what you stated above as given for the sake of argument, that's does not prove they cannot learn their name. It just proves they do not respond to it in the same manner as dogs. Different species of animals learn in different ways and respond to instructions differently. You wouldn't expect a whale to learn or respond in the same manner as a sloth, so why would you expect a cat to behave like a dog? Not to mention that there can be considerable intra-species and inter-breed variation in ability. I own several border collies and they can learn FAR more commands and generally learn them faster than my whippet because they were bred for different purposes. There is similar variation within cat species and breeds.
So what do I mean? I mean I there's no evidence that they tie that name to *themselves*. The fact that they respond to a word that they can distinguish does not mean they consider it their identity.
A distinction without a difference. All a name is for any animal is a verbal cue that the animal has learned (including humans) which has been taught specific to that animal. Some animals can generalize this more than others but if I call my cat with its name (a unique command to that animal) and it responds in the manner taught to it, then it knows its name. Whether it can generalize that behavior is a separate question. I'm puzzled how you think a dog or any other mammal would be any different in that regard. You absolutely can teach a cat a verbal cue unique to it which to all practical purposes is a name. Maybe you are going deep into something about sentience or some other philosophical nit picking but I'm not seeing any arguments which clarify your position or invalidate mine.
Yes I hate paying taxes for this reason.
Do you mean specifically the part where you thought it was about you, or do you just mean, narcissism in general?
Alas, /. won't let me mod you up though I currently have modpoints to burn, because I've posted to this thread already. Conflict of interest or avoidance of self-dealing or whatever... but that made me snort. Score + TWO just for that. Hat's off to you Aighearach.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.