Science: Cats Are Smart Enough to (Almost, Sort of) Know Their Own Names

So when your cat ignores you, that's not him being ignorant.

He knows you're calling him. He's just snubbing you to make a point.

Japanese scientists said Thursday that they’ve provided the first experimental evidence that cats can distinguish between words that we people say.

So you're kind of like dogs, whose communication with people has been studied a lot more, and who’ve been shown to recognize hundreds of words if they’re highly trained. Sorry if the comparison offends you, Kitty.

Atsuko Saito of Sophia University in Tokyo says there’s no evidence cats actually attach meaning to our words, not even their own names. Instead, they've learned that when they hear their names they often get rewards like food or play, or something bad like a trip to the vet. And they hear their names a lot. So the sound of it becomes special, even if they don’t really understand it refers to their identity.

Well, frankly, the concept of "identity," of a self and of a non-self, is actually a higher-level abstraction, despite seeming so fundamental to smarty-pants adult humans like us. I'd imagine babies only recognize words as indicators that food or play or other interaction is about to happen.

So cats are as smart as babies. Maybe.

posted by Ace of Spades at 09:04 PM

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