Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Cats learn the names of their friend cats in their daily lives

nature.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 229 posts

Re: Cats learn the names of their friend cats in their daily lives

#41

Post by bitwize »

News-Dog wrote: post #16

A friend of mine tooking in a cat that had been owned by a deaf family. This cat didn't make any noise (meow) at all, if she wanted to go out, etc., she would run between you legs, (yes, totally under-foot!) a major trip hazard. I taught her how to vocalize very quickly, which she understood we would hear, and would respond too.

Grown cats don't meow to each other. It's a noise they make to get our attention. Each cat must figure out, on their own, that meowing works to get humans' attention.

A cat with deaf human parents would have never learned this, or would have learned that meowing doesn't work and to try something else.

Re: Cats learn the names of their friend cats in their daily lives

#42

Post by X0Refraction »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #23
nerdjon wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have had cats nearly my entire life. I love dogs but I am a cat person. All of the cats in my life have been loving social pets. I hate when the idea that cats can't bond, isn't loving, all of the stereotypes of cats are thrown around. Because they are just wrong. I do think a fair amount of it is not knowing how to properly socialize a kitten. But even a socialized cat will never be as affectionate as a dog. Or at…

The thing is, I like both dogs and cats and I really like our cat. But I've only ever had failures in situations where I tried to introduce additional cats into a solitary cat situation. Which is sad, because I'd actually kind of like to have a second cat here. The only time we had any luck with two cats was when there were two from the same litter. I know some people accomplish this, but it honestly seems like the e…

It takes a long time to introduce a new cat, we have 3 indoor cats all introduced one at a time. It took around a month for both the second and third cat to be completely accepted.

The approach we took was to keep the new cat in a separate room for the first few days to allow them to begin to get used to the new scent. We would then swap blankets to give them further time to get used to each other's scents. Then we'd open the door and allow them to interact under supervision for short periods and then we gradually increased the time they could interact each day.

I'm not sure this would work if you had outdoor cats. We didn't actually intend to get the third cat, but we ended up taking him in as our friend's original cat refused to acclimate to the point that he was spending all but 20 mins a day outside of the house and so they needed a good home for their new cat.

Re: Cats learn the names of their friend cats in their daily lives

#43

Post by technothrasher »

devmor wrote: post #11
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #6

Cats have friend cats? I'm surprised. This seems like the exception rather than the rule. Seems to me like most cats prefer a life without other cats around... with human caretakers and all the comforts they provide... kept all to themselves. In my almost-50 years I think I've only met "cats with cat friends" a handful of times. Even when we had a pair of sibling cats that "liked" each other, when one of them died th…

In nature, cats form colonies where they take communal care of the young, old and infirm. One of the core behaviors of cats is hunting and providing for colony members who are too weak to do so. Cats being "solitary" animals is largely a misunderstanding of cat behavior towards humans due to cat affection being expressed differently than dog affection.

> In nature, cats form colonies where they take communal care of the young, old and infirm.

Yup. I spent several years working with feral cat colonies throughout central Massachusetts in a TNR program, and they are quite similar in their social structure to lions, less like other more solitary cat species. The colonies at their core tend to be groups of related females, with adult males roaming between a few different groups of females. Neutered males tend to act more like females and stay with a particular colony. Given the artificial food supply the "crazy cat ladies" provide, you will see colonies of unrelated individuals, but if there are multiple food sources readily available the colonies will tend to fracture by maternal line.

Re: Cats learn the names of their friend cats in their daily lives

#44

Post by goodpoint »

devmor wrote: post #11
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #6

Cats have friend cats? I'm surprised. This seems like the exception rather than the rule. Seems to me like most cats prefer a life without other cats around... with human caretakers and all the comforts they provide... kept all to themselves. In my almost-50 years I think I've only met "cats with cat friends" a handful of times. Even when we had a pair of sibling cats that "liked" each other, when one of them died th…

In nature, cats form colonies where they take communal care of the young, old and infirm. One of the core behaviors of cats is hunting and providing for colony members who are too weak to do so. Cats being "solitary" animals is largely a misunderstanding of cat behavior towards humans due to cat affection being expressed differently than dog affection.

Many species are more social and cooperative that people think.

I wonder if seeing nature as more ferocious, competitive and individualistic that it really is comes from psychological projection.

Re: Cats learn the names of their friend cats in their daily lives

#45

Post by vmception »

toss1 wrote: post #33
herodotus wrote: post #21

I have tried to train my two cats with just these words: 1. "Let's go" - morning meal 2. "Upstairs" - I am going to bed 3. "Dinner" (plus clink bowls together) - evening meal 4. "Lie Down" and their names. Emerald, who prefers being upstairs, definitely responds to "Upstairs": she charges upstairs when I say it. Jade remains enigmatic and skeptical: that seems to be her nature. But if she is in the mood for a tummy r…

Long and close observation of cats leads me to the inescapable conclusion that the latter is almost always the case. The number of times they understand some obscure thing exactly when I have no expectation that they'll get it at all, and their ability to selectively ignore the things I know they already understand, plus their ability to ask for complex things (where often I'm the dummy in the conversation) makes it…

A lot of times they respond or acknowledge as well, just not with their eyes

They wont look at you because its not their primary way of “seeing” or spatializing the world or their etiquette

Their ears might briefly move in your direction, their tail might flick in one of their frustrating ways, they might not move a muscle (which is a conscious response for them as well)

Re: Cats learn the names of their friend cats in their daily lives

#46

Post by vmception »

bitwize wrote: post #41
News-Dog wrote: post #16

A friend of mine tooking in a cat that had been owned by a deaf family. This cat didn't make any noise (meow) at all, if she wanted to go out, etc., she would run between you legs, (yes, totally under-foot!) a major trip hazard. I taught her how to vocalize very quickly, which she understood we would hear, and would respond too.

Grown cats don't meow to each other. It's a noise they make to get our attention. Each cat must figure out, on their own, that meowing works to get humans' attention. A cat with deaf human parents would have never learned this, or would have learned that meowing doesn't work and to try something else.

Exactly, cats have an extremely wide range of frequencies they can both create and hear, if they are vocalizing at all

They almost all independently chose to pick the signature one we associate with cats, just for us

Re: Cats learn the names of their friend cats in their daily lives

#47

Post by Archelaos »

nerdjon wrote: post #29
fy20 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that all names are anyway? Of course some people have names that mean other things, like say River, but you don't need to understand any language to know your name.

True, I think more. As a human even if I hear a name in another language I still fundamentally understand that it is language. Where I have to wonder if for a cat, I could train them to have a sound I play on their phone to be their name for all they care (kinda going back to them possibly thinking a ringtone could be my name). It's still just a sound that they are responding to not a word. Maybe like you said though…

> As a human even if I hear a name in another language I still fundamentally understand that it is language.

Reminds me of the classic Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry sketch "Your name, sir?": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNoS2BU6bbQ

Re: Cats learn the names of their friend cats in their daily lives

#48

Post by ntoskrnl »

robbedpeter wrote: post #27
lngnmn2 wrote: post #14

No. They just associate repeated sounds, without any semantic whatsoever, just like bird songs. Cats do not have the brain circuitry for semantic networks (based on a language concepts) evolved yet. So called language areas are required. How this crap is even got through a peer review? Rithoric question, I know.

https://youtu.be/uFhBd5mMkU8 This is one of note thousands of videos of cats and dogs using buttons to talk. Cats, and all mammals, have a neocortex. Theirs is not as deeply layered or large as humans, but they most definitely have the ability to reason abstractly, are aware of themselves, think emotionally, and engage in complex, time aware planning over long periods. Your views are wrong. Language areas like Broca'…

I watched the video and I want to believe, but... I don't know. I have cats, I know cats are intelligent, cats can be trained to understand single words, etc. But I'm just not convinced any cat can string together English sentences like this. Also, the concept of time might be a bit abstract for a cat who is always living in the present moment. And then there's the most viewed video on that channel[1] where he presses the "cuddle" button, and then... doesn't cuddle. He seems like he knows pressing a button get a reaction, but he doesn't know which button is which. Good morning human, time to play with the disembodied voice buttons again.

Like I said though, I want to believe. Can you think of any longer videos that might convince a skeptic?

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvgfI9P377U

Re: Cats learn the names of their friend cats in their daily lives

#49

Post by goodpoint »

robbedpeter wrote: post #27
lngnmn2 wrote: post #14

No. They just associate repeated sounds, without any semantic whatsoever, just like bird songs. Cats do not have the brain circuitry for semantic networks (based on a language concepts) evolved yet. So called language areas are required. How this crap is even got through a peer review? Rithoric question, I know.

https://youtu.be/uFhBd5mMkU8 This is one of note thousands of videos of cats and dogs using buttons to talk. Cats, and all mammals, have a neocortex. Theirs is not as deeply layered or large as humans, but they most definitely have the ability to reason abstractly, are aware of themselves, think emotionally, and engage in complex, time aware planning over long periods. Your views are wrong. Language areas like Broca'…

Those videos are comically misleading.

The author acts as if cats can understand abstract concepts and combining words into a SVO grammar. And with dozens of words!

"later morning" "later play [with] dad" "love you mommy"

This is simply far outside the cognitive abilities of cats.

Edit: Confirmation bias is so strong that I get downvotes for writing this.

Re: Cats learn the names of their friend cats in their daily lives

#50

Post by micromacrofoot »

smcl wrote: post #35

A weird amount of people I knew growing up named their cats just "cat" or "kitten". Every dog had a name (even in households that had a "cat" cat) but not all cats. I wonder if the cats figure their own names out in these cases :)

That's how I grew up. We always called them "cat" or "kitty" and would get more specific as needed and based on how we felt about them at the moment. Anything from "the cute black one" to "that orange fool."

We were always told that no one really owns a cat, but we should take care of them all because it's good luck.

Post reply on HN