Cats Can Recognize Their Own Names, Study Suggests

AmiMoJo shares a report from Gizmodo: Plenty of cat owners will happily tell you their felines are capable of responding to their own names, but the scientific jury remains ambivalent on the matter. A fascinating new experiment suggests this might actually be true for some cats, and it's a capacity very much tied to the social environment in which the cat lives. The new research, published today in Scientific Advances, doesn't mean cats understand the human conception of a name, but it does show that at least some cats can distinguish their names from other words. Prior research has shown that cats can recognize human gestures, facial expressions, and vocal cues. Slashdot reader sciencehabit adds: Give this a shot at home: Say four random words to your cat -- separated by about 15 seconds -- with the same length and intonation as its name. Then say its actual name. If it swivels its ears or perks up its head, chances are it knows what you call it. That's essentially what researchers did in a new study. The scientists saw similar responses when the cat's name came after the names of other felines he lived with, or when a stranger spoke the words. The findings are the first to experimentally show that cats have some understanding of what we are saying to them, the team concludes.

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