Did you know cats decode our movements through sounds?
In the interesting world of the cats’ senses there is still a lot to discover. New research has revealed that cats are able to create” mental charts” with guidance from sound signals. This discovery throws light over the deep and complex ways that cats understand the surrounding world.
Recent researchers have found interesting insight that reveals that cats create a” mental chart” to identify where humans are located based on sound. The tests involved playbacks of humans who called the cats name and hereafter played the same sounds through a speaker that was located another place and created the impression that the sound came from a more distant position.
Surprisingly the cats reacted when the well-known voice came from a place, they didn´t expect based on earlier sound impression. This discovery indicates that cats use sound signals to find out where their owners are, earlier this was an unknown cognitive ability in cats.
The cat’s mental chart
Generally, the cats showed the biggest surprise when their owners familiar voice seemed to teleport from one place to the other. This indicates that cats had created a mental picture of their unseen owners and mapped their placings based on where they first heard the voice.
To have the ability to create a mental picture of the surroundings is an important characteristic in complex thinking and these results give new insights that can inform future research in cat cognition.
You can read more about the research project here