Cats have been living with humans for about 12,000 years, and during this period they seem to have noticed how we communicate, he writes independent.
According to previous research, cats have diverse cognitive abilities. They are able to follow certain gestures, recognize their names, and even recognize familiar cats and people.
It was led by Saho Takagi, a cognitive researcher at Azabue University in Japan research Cats are “designed” to learn some aspects of human language.
“I was very surprised because this means cats can eavesdrop on human conversations and understand words without any special reward-based training,” he said.
Until now, it has not been clear whether cats can learn words in the same way that dogs do. In the research published in October, methods used to assess language development in 14-month-old children were used. Children usually begin to associate words with objects after hearing them several times, and it usually takes about 16 to 20 times to memorize phrases.
In their study, the researchers examined 31 domestic cats. Each animal was placed in front of a laptop computer showing two short cartoon animations while an audio clip was played in which its handler said a made-up word. The researchers noticed this
Most cats habituated to the pairing stimulus after four trials, a shorter process than is typically presented to infants in similar studies.
In another experiment, half of the audio clips did not match the pictures, and the cats showed signs of confusion, spending an average of 33 percent more time looking at the screen when they noticed a mismatch between the word and the picture.
According to the study, the results indicate that cats can quickly form visual connections between images and words.
Saho Takagi pointed out that cats care more about what we say in daily life and try to understand us, more than we think. However, experts insist that more studies are needed to determine whether these cognitive abilities are limited to cats.
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