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 sheds light over the deep and complex ways that cats understand the surrounding world.

Recent researchers have found interesting insights 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 after which the same sounds were played through a speaker that was located in 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 impressions. 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 another. This indicates that cats had created a mental picture of their unseen owners and mapped their locations 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.