But if you want memorizing annoying behavior, look to know further than cats. They are masters at learning how to annoy people to get up and feed them breakfast. They never forget an annoying feat. I had one cat who learned that he could walk back and forth across an old CRT television in the bedroom that had a case that creaked annoyingly loudly. Plus pawing at the Venetian blinds. And sitting on my chest and pawing me in the face. And reaching up to the foot of the bed to paw at my feet…
Cats are master manipulators. We’re lucky they don’t have motile eyebrows, like dogs do, or we would be completely screwed.
It’s been claimed somewhere that cats meowings aren’t a typical feline mode of communication that they use with other cats - but rather their attempt at emulating human speech. Kind of reminiscent of . .
Which I’d totally buy. We had a Blue Seal Point once upon a time who was more-or-less parsimonious in her word-like communicative with her human folk - but then one day she got accidentally trapped in the attic all day long. After being freed she had a lot to say, with eerily identifiable syntax and some fairly choice kitty words.
Dog paws aren’t a dexterous as cat paws, but I do know dogs that can open doors with lever handles with their mouths. I also know a poodle that tried to open one of those gates that needs you to manipulate two things at once, and when she couldn’t, she got the other dog to handle one part while she got the other.
In general, though, dogs don’t need to mimic humans so often because they just trust and ask us to do things for them, and expect us to tell them what we want them to do. I once read something that said: cats see other animals, including humans, as just weird shaped, incompetent cats (so, they mimic us in the same circumstances in which they’d mimic another cat, to do what it did); dogs, though, see humans as different than dogs, and can read our cues better an differently than they would those of another dog (although humans that know how to mimic dog cues make better trainers and playmates).
As for other species, why would they mimic us? The rest are just a list of the smartest known animals, and they probably do have enough intelligence to realize that mimicking can be useful, but for anything else mimicking a member of another species will just get you killed. That’s a really strong selection pressure that humans helped dogs and cats overcome with selective breeding.
Also also - cats don’t just mimic humans. My cat has definitely learned a lot from watching dogs, too.
True enough, it’s more noticing a cause and effect (even if she got the “bells ring - door opens” chain of events backwards) and figuring out how to duplicate it to get what she wants. Did I mention she is also spoiled rotten? She has trained us well.
Once I was doing some exercises on the floor that involved placing balls under my body. My cat watched intently for a while, then left the room. He came back in a moment later playing with one of his balls.
One of my cats learned how to open the big sliding window that closes my living room from the balcony. I had the lock removed since I closed myself out many years ago, but the window is damn heavy to move anyway. This cat somewhat found a way to slowly open it. I’ve watched it and admired the patience of going literally half a centimeter at a time until albeit exhausted he succeeds and both cats could get through.
Here’s that little criminal training himself by climbing the same window curtains then getting some rest up there; no surprises that he can open it.
I’ve trained one of my cats (the one that’s bonded to me, the other two are bonded to my wife and daughter respectively) to come when I click my thumbnails.
Been trying to teach him to do “high fives” because one of his favorite perches is the back of the couch that I walk by to get to the bathroom, but he doesn’t seem at all interested in learning that one. (actually, he seems mildly annoyed each time I try to teach him).
It’s worse if they do. One of my friends is a psychiatrist who thought it would be great to do the impossible and train his cat to both use the can and flush.
The unintended consequence was a $500 (roughly) water bill the month after the cat figured it out. Seems like when he was at work all day, besides sleeping, the cat didn’t do much other than amuse itself by flushing repeatedly.
