Originally published at: Slow blinking to a cat is a way of saying "I Trust/Love You" | Boing Boing
…
Somewhere along the way, “celebrity animal behaviourist” became a thing, and these people are all over the internet (and reality TV in some cases) now.
The thing to keep in mind is that these people have no qualifications. Their expertise is self-imagined. In Jackson’s case, he volunteered at a some animal shelters when he was younger and for a while had a friend who was a fake-medicine veterinarian who should have lost her license for the things she was doing.
He’s not a zoologist, ethologist, veterinarian, or anyone else who has actually done science about this stuff and is thus qualified to speak about it in an authoritative way.
Much of what they say is basic stuff your veterinarian will tell you, and a lot of it is just plain made up. Because they are not scientists with standards, you have no idea which is which when they speak.
That doesn’t mean what he’s saying in this video is wrong, but understand that this guy has zero qualifications and is simply telling you things he thinks are true. He’s just another weird uncle on Facebook who happens to have gotten famous for it because he has weird earrings or whatever.
“I trust you enough to not attack me in the time it takes me to blink.”
That’s not much, but it’s more than most people get. It’s all relative.
I combined this with yawning to get my cats to take a nap.
A male cat is called a tom, actually. Bull is for things like cattle, camels, elephants, hippotamuses, whales, and crocodiles.
And redfish!
And certain politicians…
And red catfish!
I asked my cat and he blinked twice denoting it’s not true
You asked whom what, now?
Slow down, sparky; you’re skipping typing important parts of your sentences…
Editing your comment doesn’t mean that your error didn’t happen or that no one noticed; just fyi.
Wow, I love that gif!
Though, based on the horizontal orientation of that organism’s tail fluke, it’s not so muuch a catfish as a felinatee…
/DukeTrout reporting from the Well Actually…
If it makes you feel better I noticed that too…I was torn between it being more of a cat-seal, and thinking that’s how the tail should go because cats are still mammals.
Almost like a tabby dugong.
Just watched a cute netflix documentary last night, How Cats Think (or something like that). It went into slow blinking and other cat behaviours. It’s worth checking out if you like cats, but it sort of ignored all of the evil cat things like killing birds for sport.
Calling their natural predatory instincts ‘evil’ is some human projection.
That said, it’s the owners who should be responsible for keeping their cats from doing needless harm to the local birds, etc whenever possible.
Definitely a southern hemisphere variant!
Pygmy leopard seal, maybe?
Or some kind of miniature sea lion.