Three summers ago one night our Burmese didn’t come home. I went out to the sidewalk, shaking a bag of cat treats, and the white cat we had then, not the smartest, most demonstrative or communicative or loving cat ever, ran to me and trotted in front of me, leading to the driveway next door, looking over at me every couple of yards to see if I was still following, ending our walk at the neighbour’s garage door.
“Marcello?” I called.
“WAH! WAH! WAH!” burst from inside the garage.
I am convinced the white cat was miming “oh, you want to know where jerkface is? Follow me.” Because she never did that before or after. I wonder now if Jerkface/Marcello communicated to her without sniffing body parts ‘geez, I’m in a spot. I hope the White Devil comes and tells our staff of giants to come rescue me.’
You’re referring to “Clever Hans”, from the early 1900s. In that case, the horse was picking up on unconscious clues being given by his trainer. The trainer would physically tense up when Hans began slowly tapping out an answer. Once Hans reached the right answer, the trainer relaxed. Hans learned to pick up on these body clues, and would stop tapping at that point. Finally someone thought to ask Hans questions without the trainer present, and he failed.
This occurs today, when drug-sniffing dogs give false positive responses, because they’re picking up on unconscious triggers from their handlers.
Animals are highly clever, but the attempts at going ‘how human are they’ is rather daft. Still, this does prove they want to please the pack/herd leader.
