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By Tom Howarth
Science Reporter (Nature)
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Common house cats possess the ability to associate human words with images without prompting or reward, new research conducted by animal scientists at Azabu University in Japan has revealed.
This discovery, published in the journal Scientific Reports, sheds new light on feline cognitive abilities and their potential for understanding human language.
"Human infants rapidly learned arbitrary associations between words and objects at a young age," the authors wrote.
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"How did this ability to understand language evolve? It is not clear what selection pressures are related to language comprehension ability, though some studies have shown that this word-object associative ability is not limited to humans but is present also in other species."
The team designed an experiment to test cats' ability to form picture-word associations. The study involved 31 adult house cats and utilized a methodology similar to those used in infant language development research.
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In the experiment, cats were shown short animations paired with nonsensical words ("keraru" and "parumo"). These animations were played on a loop until the cats looked away. After a break, the same animations were shown, but with the spoken words reversed. Researchers carefully observed the cats' reactions, focusing on gaze duration and pupil dilation.
The results were striking: cats demonstrated longer gaze durations and pupil dilation when the word-image pairings were switched, indicating confusion and a search for explanation.
This behavior suggests that the cats had formed associations between the spoken words and the images they saw, even without any rewards or training.
"It is noteworthy that cats made the picture-word association after only brief exposure," the authors said. "Most cats habituated to the stimulus pairing after four trials, which means that they received only nine second exposures in two trials for each picture-word pair."
By comparison, trials involving human infants used at least four 20-second trials for a picture-word pair, meaning, yes, cats may be smarter than babies.
"This study suggests that cats pay attention to human speech and may understand the meaning of words," Saho Takagi, the study's lead author, told Newsweek. "It is possible that cats understand much of what humans say, just not react to it."
Owners should therefore talk to their cats more, Takagi suggested.
But the study's authors noted that it's not clear why cats are able to form these associations so quickly and suggest more work is needed to examine the question from both evolutionary and developments perspectives.
The impacts of domestication on cats need to be investigated too, they said. This is particularly pertinent, as the research also indicated that cats might find it easier to form associations between objects and human speech rather than electronic sounds.
Much remains to be explored in the world of cat communication; questions of long term associations and recalling names of other cats or family members are still unanswered.
"We are considering future research that investigates more complex forms of language comprehension in cats, perhaps exploring whether they can understand sentence structures or more abstract concepts related to human communication," Takagi said.
Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about cats? Let us know via science@newsweek.com.
References
Takagi, S., Koyasu, H., Nagasawa, M., & Kikusui, T. (2024). Rapid formation of picture-word association in cats. Scientific Reports, 14(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-74006-2
Update 10/21/24 2:00 p.m. ET: The article was updated with comments from Saho Takagi.
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