Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/04/04/science-cats-might-be-slightl.html
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Cats recognize the sounds of their names within sentences … though it’s not clear they understand that they are being named.
Hard same.
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Cats hear their names just fine. They just can’t be bothered to get up from that fine fine nap they are having.
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Blasphemy!!!
But still, I will post this video
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Wait, let me see if I got this right, humans are willing to keep a box in their houses of cat shit, scoop it out a few times a week, while providing cats affection (on demand of course, and only on their time table), food, water, and toys which they inevitably ignore in favor of batting around our stuff, scratching up the furniture/house, knocking shit down for no reason whatsoever, howling in the middle of the night, sleeping on our faces, sitting on our keyboards when we’re working… etc, etc… But they are the stupid ones?
Anyways, team kitty!!!
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Oh come on.
Cats clearly can’t understand that. They are exactly as dim and lazy as they appear. They aren’t hiding their intelligence and plans to control humanity in plain sight at all.
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Both cats and dogs have successfully domesticated humans.
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Not sure that “paying attention to what humans are saying” is necessarily a good criteria for measuring intelligence.
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So, of course, has grass, which is even less flattering.
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To the grass, sure.
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How do the “researchers” know the cats’ names? Sure, we call them “Mr Fluffy” or whatever; maybe the cat calls himself “Leo, Destroyer of Sofas.”
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Yeah but dogs actually had to spend several thousand years doing useful work like helping us hunt food and herd animals and whatnot before they got couch privileges.
If a blind person entrusted their life to a cat they’d be led into oncoming traffic after the first time they were late serving up breakfast.
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On a less funny note, I believe there’s a co-domestication theory that’s been floated. I’m not sure if it has legs in terms of science but it makes sense to me.
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I fixed it:
Cats recognize the sounds of their names within sentences, report researchers in Japan, though it’s not clear they care.
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Cats were used by ancient civilizations to guard food storehouses from rats and other pests, and were so valuable that the ancient Egyptians even began worshiping them and mummifying their remains. Cats have been working pets for millennia.
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Effanineffable!
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That’s just letting cats do what they do naturally though, they don’t do it because they give a shit about what humans want or because they were trained in any way. Owls eat rodents too but we don’t think of them as “working” for us.
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Cats’ and humans’ interests aligned about 4 or 5 millennia ago. A particular wimpy bunch of wolves willing to do anything just to be called “good boys” were rescued from the Siberian steppe 15-20 millennia ago.
Actually, my understanding is the cats are pretty lucky: genets might well have gotten the job instead. But they didn’t purr…
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