animal intelligence – Page 2

New York Times Ethicist: ‘My Boyfriend Said He’d Save Our Cat but Not a Stranger if Both Were Drowning’

As Charles Darwin pointed out, the difference between humans and animals is one of degree, not kind. That should factor into discussions on the value of animal life.

The headline — ‘My Boyfriend Said He’d Save Our Cat but Not a Stranger if Both Were Drowning’ — comes from the New York Times via its Ethicist column, in which NYU philosophy professor Kwame Anthony Appiah answers questions from readers about moral rights and wrongs.

Here’s the full text of the question:

My boyfriend and I were talking about protecting human life, and he said that he doesn’t believe that human life is necessarily worth more than any other kind of life. For example, he said that if one of our cats were drowning next to a human who was a stranger to us (who was also drowning) and he could save just one, he would choose our cat. Is this morally wrong?

Appiah, in his very first sentence in response, regretfully calls pets “fictive kin” before pointing to a study by an experimental psychologist in which participants were asked whether they’d save their pets or a foreign tourist if both stepped in front of a bus at the same time. Forty percent of respondents picked the pet.

To his credit, Appiah notes the people who chose their pets don’t have “some grave defect of character,” and said the impulse to save a companion pet is “very human,” given all we share with our animals, including “affection, companionship, loyalty, all twined around a whole lot of memories.”

That said, Appiah says human life is more valuable:

“But yes, it’s very wrong. (In states with “duty to rescue” laws, it could be illegal too.) Those human strangers? They had rich emotional lives and they had plans, short-term and long-term, big and small; it’s a good guess that they were also part of other people’s plans, other people’s emotional lives.”

I’m not going to get into the question of whether human or animal life has more value. That’s a mine field, I don’t subscribe to the idea that we should work out hierarchies of life’s value as if we’re ranking favorite ice cream flavors, and it seems to me these “what if?” questions involving oncoming buses or trains don’t have much value in gauging reality.

After all, how many people do you know were forced to make life or death decisions in a millisecond, let alone decisions involving a complex moral and emotional calculus? Appiah seems to agree, while also pointing out that what people say in a questionnaire doesn’t necessarily predict what they’d do in the moment.

Life is life. It’s all valuable, and the survey doesn’t have much use outside the classroom or ethics columns.

Buddy the Handsome Cat — Buddy the Cat: Brains as well as brawn.

However, I do think it’s worth pointing out that much of what Appiah assumes is the difference between human and animal life — particularly rich emotional lives, cognition and value to others — can indeed be attributed to animals.

There’s been a seismic shift in the way most scientists view animal cognition over the past decade, and in many ways the acknowledgement of non-human sentience and potential sapience is long overdue — there are literally thousands of studies confirming animals are conscious, sentient, and possessed of the full range of primary and secondary emotions.

Every time we set new barriers for what distinguishes human from non-human, we’re forced to change the goalposts. When behaviorism was the dominant model, the distinction was internal thought processes. In dismantling behaviorism, Noam Chomsky helped launch the cognitive revolution. Then it was emotion and love, which crumbled with the ugly Harry Harlow studies into maternal deprivation in monkeys. Then it was capacity to reason, tool use, innovation — and every time, we’ve revised our definitions, solid in our conviction that we’re fundamentally different.

In fact, the only thing that’s held up is Charles Darwin’s original observation in 1871 that “the difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind.”

In other words, humans aren’t some higher order of being. We are animals. Upjumped animals in some sense, but animals all the same, subject to the same diseases, physical limitations and helplessness in the face of greater forces like nature.

We may live in an age when our planet is blanketed in satellites, scientists are on fusion’s doorstep and each one of us has the entire sum of our species’ knowledge at our fingertips, but it’s shocking how quickly the veneer of civilization can collapse when people are scared, the food runs out, social order breaks down and those primal motivations — the ones we think we’ve out-evolved — drive our actions again. The early days of the COVID pandemic was just a small reminder of that.

We don’t like talking about these uncomfortable truths because they lead to more uncomfortable truths about the billions of non-human minds we share the planet with, and how we treat them.

I can’t claim to be a philosopher, although I minored in the subject over the objections of my advisor. (He should have warned me off journalism!) But when it comes to animal cognition I do have a great teacher, an 11-pound ball of fur who won’t let me forget he’s got his own wants, needs and strong emotions. Doesn’t he deserve consideration too?

Study: Even Experienced Caretakers Give Cats ‘Unwelcome Affection’

When it comes to petting cats, less is more. Not everyone knows that.

By chance, one of the first things I saw Tuesday in my post-wake-up browsing was a short video of three guys standing in a triangle formation, each of them with a puppy. A drum recording began, and the men began drumming an overturned pot in the middle with the puppies’ paws.

The dogs, of course, had no idea what was going on. They were confused and stressed. Then I saw this from the official TikTok page of Imperial Point Animal Hospital in Delray Beach, Florida:

@mydelrayvet

#animalhospital #ipah #kitten #catsoftiktok #veterinarian #vettech #delraybeach #vettech #dance #fyp

♬ origineel geluid – Sylvana Bosz Volkers

That’s a veterinarian abusing a kitten.

It might not be overt abuse. She’s not hitting or screaming at the poor cat. But she’s taking a sentient being with its own feelings, likes and dislikes, comforts and discomforts, and using it as a toy for clicks and likes on social media.

I thought about that when I read the newest study from Nottingham Trent University and the University of Nottingham, which looks at the way people interact with their cats and how their behavior may or may not align with what cats prefer and what they’re comfortable with.

Although Bud and I have a deep bond formed over more than seven years of spending time together, establishing trust, mutual respect and love, he would tear my face off if I did to him what the vet tech is doing to the kitten in the above video.

And you know what? He’d be justified, once he got over the shock and wondered if I’d been replaced with a doppleganger.

The UK study involved more than 100 felines at Battersea Dogs and Cats’ London cattery, with scientists recording interactions between humans and cats via a GoPro camera in a large pen where people can interact with cats one-on-one. There were 120 human participants of various ages and from different walks of life. Each person interacted with three cats separately.

Researchers looked at whether the cat or the human initiated interaction, where the human touched the cat, whether the human restrained the cat, and the cat’s response.

They also collected information on each human participant, such as how many cats they have at home and how long they’ve been caring for felines. Human participants rated themselves on how well they know cats and how well they take care of them.

They used a system that corresponds to the below image to grade physical affection. The image is mostly self-explanatory, but to be clear, the green areas are where cats like to be touched, the yellow areas are “meh,” and the red areas are no-go zones for most cats:

In earlier studies, the team established what many cat caretakers know: Allowing cats to initiate physical interactions, going easier and lighter on petting, letting cats control how long the interactions last, and avoiding any kind of restraint are “best practices” for petting cats. They reaffirmed that scratching cats under the chin, rubbing their cheeks and forehead are “the best ways to increase their affection and reduce aggression.”

That might seem obvious, but in research there’s an important distinction between knowing something (or thinking you know it) and proving it with research. It’s important to prove it, and to forgo assumptions, to produce credible and repeatable experiments.

Animal behaviorist Lauren Finka, lead author on the new study, said although the above may seem like common knowledge among experienced caretakers, that’s not always true, and it’s not always reflected in their behavior.

“Our findings suggest that certain characteristics we might assume would make someone good at interacting with cats—how knowledgeable they say they are, their cat ownership experiences and being older—should not always be considered as reliable indicators of a person’s suitability to adopt certain cats, particularly those with specific handling or behavioral needs,” Finka said.

We should point out here that these are “best practices” for establishing a healthy, trusting relationship with cats, and taking their feelings into consideration. Lots of people might force their cats to do things without much push back, but that doesn’t mean the cat is happy. No one’s perfect, and there are always things we can learn about how to do better by our furry friends.

Finka also said she hopes people who run shelters and rescues take the research into consideration. That’s because some people run into the same problems I did: When you’ve never had a cat, and/or you don’t fit the profile of what people think a “cat person” is or should be, you could encounter resistance or skepticism from shelter staff.

One volunteer at an animal shelter asked me if I was adopting a kitten for my kids or girlfriend, because it didn’t occur to her that I’d want a cat. Some shelters require references from a veterinarian, which you can’t get if you’ve never had a pet before.

“Importantly, within shelters, we should also avoid discriminating against potential adopters with no previous cat ownership experience,” Finka said, “because with the right support, they may make fantastic cat guardians.”

For us, it’s more confirmation of what we’ve always believed: The more you take your cat’s feelings into consideration, and treat the little one with the respect he or she deserves, the happier your cat and the deeper your bond will grow.

@mydelrayvet

Palmer came in for puppy vaccines and is Bowser’s #1 Fan! #IPAH #animalhospital #vettech #veternarian #englishlabs #puppydrums

♬ original sound – Benji 💙

Cats Know Where We Are Even If It Seems Like They’re Not Paying Attention

New research offers more evidence that despite their poker faces, cats do care about where their humans are and what they’re doing.

A new study from Japan found cats keep track of their humans even when they’re not looking at them.

A research team from the University of Kyoto conducted the experiments in a cat cafe and in individual cats’ homes. Each cat was placed in a room without their humans. Then the researchers tested the way felines reacted to hearing their people calling their names from outside the room, followed by their reactions to hearing them inside via speakers.

When the cats heard their humans calling them from inside the room the furballs were surprised, expressing their confusion with ear twitches, whisker movement and uncertain body language.

On the other hand, when cats heard “non-social stimuli” — scientist-speak for sounds other than familiar people calling to them — they didn’t react to changes in the location and direction.

Some people might shrug and wonder what the fuss is about, but the experiment actually confirms a great deal about feline intelligence. It’s a test of what scientists call “socio-spatial cognition,” meaning cats form a mental map of things that are important to them, and nothing’s more important to a house cat than the person who provides food, security and affection.

That’s significant because it’s confirmation that cats understand object permanence, and that they are more than capable of abstract thought. Abstract thought — the ability to picture and think about something mentally, without having to see it — is hugely important in intelligence, allowing everything from creativity to understanding that other animals and people have their own points of view. For context, it takes about two years for human children to develop rudimentary abstract thinking skills.

Cats “may be thinking about many things,” Saho Takagi, the study’s lead author, told CNN.

“This study shows that cats can mentally map their location based on their owner’s voice,” Takagi said, per The Guardian. “[It suggests] that cats have the ability to picture the invisible in their minds. Cats have a more profound mind than is thought.”

Things like object permanence and spatial awareness were necessary for cats to thrive as hunters for the millions of years they’ve existed on Earth.

The results aren’t surprising from an evolutionary perspective, biologist Roger Tabor said.

“That awareness of movement – tracking things they cannot see – is critical to a cat’s survival,” Tabor told The Guardian.

“A lot of what a cat has to interpret in its territory is an awareness of where other cats are. It is also important for hunting: how could a cat catch a field vole moving around beneath the grass if it couldn’t use clues, such as the occasional rustle, to see in its mind’s eye, where they are? A cat’s owner is extremely significant in its life as a source of food and security, so where we are is very important.”

The study is also another piece of evidence showing cats are just as aware of — and concerned about — their people as dogs are, even though the conventional wisdom says they don’t care most of the time. That has implications for the way people bond with their cats, and the decisions we make about caring for them — like, for instance, how long we’re willing to leave them on their own while planning a trip.

“This is a great example of elevating our expectation of the cat a little bit,” cat behavior consultant Ingrid Johnson told CNN, “and realizing that they do have the capability of having that bond in that relationship where they actually will take comfort in their people.”