Eh, any time someone ascribes motivations to animals, my butthole spasms.
The best that should be said is that the behaviors they exhibit are similar to the behaviors they exhibit for kittens or sometimes sick cats.
Somehow, somebody decided that meant they think we’re bad hunters, and the idea took off because it’s funny, but you can’t know what goes on inside the thoughts of other humans reliably, much less other animals.
There’s competing possibilities that the cats are showing off their kills to their social group, which is not only a common behavior when cats are young, but when they’re mated, but you don’t see people crowing about them bringing us food to get in our pants.
Overall, cats seem to treat us like other cats. Not exactly the same, but with less distinction than other domesticated animals. Horses, as an example, have a much wider distinction, for equally unprovable reasons.
My personal pet idea is that any sufficiently social animal, including humans, is instinctively going to seek out groups. They/we will negotiate the lack of a unifying language as best as possible, but with plenty of misunderstandings. It isn’t so much that other animals see us as being the same as them. It’s that they don’t really have the need for the distinction; there’s the in group (pride, pack, clan, whatever you want to call it) and out groups. When dealing with the family group, any animal will perform the same basic behaviors that their instincts tell them to.
Domestication just means that a given type of animal has developed or been bred to have, a stronger instinct for social bonding than wild animals, to the degree that they’ll accept other species as family easier.
To add to this, an outside observer would say humans think their pets are little humans, throwing birthday parties, dressing them in clothing, talking to them.
You can pry Mr. Scruffles’ humanity from my cold, dead hands!
Mr Scruffles tax?
Magnificent.
No, Mr Scruffles commits tax evasion
Well, some do seem to think that.
I think the difference between cats and dogs is mainly tens of thousands of additional years of co-operative evolution. Cats are amazing but dogs you can almost assume can understand your emotions and care, that comes from the absurd length of time dogs and humans have been friends, it is a relationship that far predates other domestication by an immense length of time.
It’s also worth noting that there’s good evidence that cats self-domesticated, much more than dogs did. This will also have an impact on the relationship, with cats basically doing cat things for us on their terms and dogs doing dog things for us on our terms.
I think cats can often understand your emotions… they just don’t care lol
My personal pet idea
Heh
That’s it, you’re part of my pack now!
- Dogs: He give me a home, he protect and feed me, he must be a God
- Cats: He give me a home, he protect and feed me, I must be a God
Ancient Egyptians: That cat makes a great point.
House dust mite: I poop on your face while you sleep.
Dog brings you things because you asked, it’s asking to play, or because they wanted to reward you.
Cat brings you things because it thinks you fucking suck at hunting and feeding yourself.
My dog gives me stuff all the time. At first I thought it meant he wanted to play with the object, but, nope. He’s just spent the last fifteen minutes fighting the other dog away from it, running around the house with it in his mouth. Then when he’s finally “won”, he gently places it down right in front of me, sits and stares at my eyes, “This is very important to us dogs, but I love you the most, so you can have it.”
picks up slobbered cow hoof with a pinch “Thank you so much, buddy! How about I hold it, you can chew; we can share.”
He does do this with the other dog at times too, though. Usually when she’s calmed down and snoozing, he’ll bring a treat over to her, watch her accept it, and goes on his way.
Gifting is his love language.
“I take care of my human. I bring them mouse once a week, twice after new moon because so dark. Hope they survive on that.”
My cat played fetch, just like a dog. Cats like playing.
I hate it when people just assume stuff about cats, treat them that way, and then say stuff like ‘cats are so aloof and they only like me because I feed them.’
Meanwhile, my neighbour’s cat loves my family even though we don’t feed her, because we snuggle her. The person who feeds her just chucks her outside when she gets home. And then she comes to us for scritches.
My cat sometimes brings toys because it wants to play. That doesn’t happen too often, though
My cat has figured out how to pantomime chasing the dot as his way of asking me to break out the laser pointer.
video proof required
my other cat is extremely ADHD and he brings me toys many times a day. he runs from the other side of the apartment screaming with the toy in his mouth and then sits next to me until i throw that toy. also if we’re away for several hours he delivers toys on our bed.
My one cat fetches things like 80% of the way. Sure drops them a meter and half in front of me every single time
Time to get your steps in, human!
I find it sweet when a cat brings toys to the bed, mine does it sometimes, too, even though it doesn’t play on the bed, because we discourage this 😅
This is a daily occurrence for me. Normally she brings it to the couch, but if I’m late leaving my desk for lunch she will absolutely bring the toy into my office.
My older cat tells me when it’s time to get up, when it’s bedtime, etc. He woke me up and is currently content with me being on my phone as long as I don’t close my eyes and go back to sleep. In about 20 minutes though he’ll decide it’s time for me to get up and he’ll herd me into the bathroom.
Sure, the cat that gets fed daily by us and even begs us for food thinks we suck at hunting and feeding ourselves…
It is such a dumb take.
Agreed. Much more likely it’s a sign of affection. “Here’s a treat for you, hoomin!”
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I have doubts that any credible and serious scientific discovery would involve this degree of anthropomorphism when it comes to assigning motivation to an animal’s behavior.
But let’s say I ended up with a hecking case of brain worms who devoured the vast majority of my critical thinking skills and was able to completely ignore that first point, this still doesn’t quite compute. If you’ve ever had cats and/or dogs in your life, then you are probably also aware that each one has its own unique personality and behaviors. Even if we assume that they have human-like rationalizations and emotional capacity, does it even make sense to believe that they all uniformly perceive people in the same uniform manner?
It’s based on way too many reinterpretations of descriptions of studies into how cats communicate. Basically cats without human interaction will only meow as kittens communicating to their mom and their mother might meow back, and as they grow older they will learn to communicate with each other purely by body language and pheramones. Cats who interact with humans have learned that meowing at us like kittens gets our attention and is effective at communicating with us.
Some have interpreted that to mean cats see us as really strange kittens, which of course gets miscommunicated by well meaning people repeating something they half-remember. It seems the reality is just cats have learned to adjust their behavior to better coexist with humans.
Impressively, cats and their humans also will develop complex enough communication that humans can interpret the need of the cat purely from their meow
At least this is my memory of research I half-remember reading about
I love research telephone :D
I have come to accept the research telephone. Yeah, my understanding of the actual research is filtered through countless interlocking individuals and who knows how many narrative frameworks. The best I can do, without just getting a degree in the field, is to try to sample as many of these narrative interpretations as possible.
When I see the point made that we believe science like a new religion, I cannot help but see the glimmer of truth in that interpretation. Ok, sure, fine by me. I trust the mechanism of passive-aggressive peer review more than any holy text or hierarchy of clergy.
Well said.
some have interpreted that to mean cats see us as really strange kittens,
Not just the meowing. Bringing dead animals is also thought to be related to maternal instinct or some other social behaviour.
I do agree though that people are running with this stuff further than the science has verified.
Agreed, cats are more than aware that the tall creatures in the house, are the ones that know how to use a can opener.
On scientific level, dogs is a herd animal, which need a leader, cats don’t know leaders, they a single hunters, they can create asociations with other cats if it have advantages to obtain food, leader or boss are not in their vocabulary. Human can be a good friend but not more, if not, he’s only the tin opener. As said, cats are almost the exact opposite of dogs, even in their body lenguage.
Wild cats sometimes form colonies. Those structures do have matriarchs. There is dominance in the groups.
Yes, but these are not hirarchical Groups like in Dogs or Wulfs, these are more interests groups to follow the smartest, which in felines are the females, most the oldest and experienced. But there are not organized structures. “You know where the food is, I’ll follow you”. Lions are the only cats with structured groups and a leader.
I have doubts that any credible and serious scientific discovery would involve this degree of anthropomorphism when it comes to assigning motivation to an animal’s behavior.
But let’s say I ended up with a hecking case of brain worms who devoured the vast majority of my critical thinking skills and was able to completely ignore that first point, this still doesn’t quite compute.
This part was very obnoxious and not needed fyi.
In all fairness. That is exactly how I feel about your reply.
And now my own.
That’s more than fair
Sure but Lemmy seems to be trying to keep away the redditness and the best way to do that is pointing out when people are deing dicks for no reason.
yrs iz kool
I mean, he’s walking through his very solid reasoning for why the headline fails the sniff test, despite being a factoid that is frequently repeated through many channels by many people.
People talk all the time about how we need to strengthen critical thinking skills in the general public. Outside of formal training, this is what that looks like: a culture of publicly explaining the thought process that leads you to question something that many others have accepted without question. The knee jerk reaction of criticizing such statements as rude or overly negative is a big part of why these skills have such a hard time spreading, since people who have the skills feel it’s not socially acceptable to share their conclusions.
You’re very lenient with what you call a skill considering the part I mentioned doesn’t convey any reasoning. Maybe I’m glossing over something but to me it sounds like a bunch of self-righteous filler. I’m not arguing with the contents of the statement that follows, I actually agree there. I just felt compelled to address the pretentiousness because it almost made me skip the informational part.
“This claim leans heavily into anthropomorphizing non-human things, and that is very rare in rigorous science. Therefore I suspect this is not an accurate representation of rigorous science.”
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Is clear and valid reasoning
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Is clearly conveyed by the part you mentioned
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Presents a straightforward reasoning tool people can apply more generally to help them identify cases where scientific results are likely being misrepresented. Exactly the kind of tool that someone can adopt to become better at applying critical thinking in their life.
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Is much more useful in a broader set of circumstances than the more specific arguments that appear later in the comment to further deconstruct this specific case.
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I mean, she knows I’m much better than her at opening wet food cans.
“This cat is awful, but I’ll keep it around because it knows how to open the food stones.”
I’m pretty sure my cat understands that people are not cats. She hisses at any other cat she sees, but has no problem with people.
It’s because the other cats might actually be a threat, whereas the furless elongated ones are just terribly incompetent.
and proboly from experince aswell, and learning from others and smell
Cats have a completely different language when interacting with humans. They mostly just meow around us
That is not a “scientific fact”. That is just something somebody wrote for the likes.
My favourit scientivic fact is that tiktok i saw some kid made and is the only source of that fact.
“observational maybe”
Dogs have owners.
Cats have staff.Dogs own us Cats are prisoners
All I’ll say is cats meow at humans and they don’t meow at other cats except their own mom. To me this instantly defeats this take.
It’s just a fun post though so I’m not judging.
I have 2 cats. One of them meows at people, cats, dogs, birds, butterflies, toys…
The other only meows when she’s suffering horrible torture, like being picked up, or needing to scratch at the door the times without it opening.
Is the first one a siamese…?
Extremely chatty critters, those…
They’re both “european shorthairs” we got from the pound. But she might be, she’s definitely chatty and mean like one.
Cats meow at other cats besides their mother too. It’s a complete myth that they don’t.
I have 4 cats age 11, 11, 6, and 1. I also grew up with cats in my childhood home. In 34 years, I have never had a cat meow at another cat.
My two meow at each other, humans, and the dog.
I kind of am judging. Misrepresenting how science works and what it can and can’t do ia a dangerous game on the age of intentional misinformation. Even if you’re just trying to be cute and fun.
You know what, you’re right, framing it as a “scientific discovery” isn’t cool.
How to say you are not a cat owner without saying you are not a cat owner.
I’m not backing the take itself, as other said it is widely extrapolation, but i don’t really understand how the fact that cats meowing only/mostly at their mom and humans would invalidate the theory that humans and cats are the same category in cats’ minds, since they use it for both cats and humans. It could indicate that they consider humans kinda like parents cats or just parents, maybe, but i don’t see how it indicates that they could consider humans as non cats.
Am science. Can confirm.
We have strong evidence to the contrary. Cats only meow to humans, not to other cats. So they know we’re fundamentally different.
Kittens meow to their mothers.
But yeah, cats have evolved to meow in just the right tone that makes us go all “aww, I need to help this cute little varmint, even if it will scratch me for the effort”, so you’ve got a point there.
Cats like being pet because the oils in our hands remove dust from their fur and we can scratch places they can’t easily reach.
Also who doesn’t like being pet?
afaik it’s not that cats have evolved to meow at us, it’s much more simply that they notice that meowing is really effective at getting our attention, and if they happen to make other noises that catch our attention and help them get what they want, they’ll also use those noises.
like, go watch the channel “lucy and stitch”, Stitch consistently and almost exclusively makes little “eh” noises, it doesn’t have to be meows.
Is that how it works? I’ve had dogs try breeding my leg, cats not so much. That anecdote presents an opposite case.
Ive seen a dog hump inanimate objects so I don’t think thats a great gauge.
Cats have standards.
You clearly weren’t interacting with horny cats.
Horny cats might randomly bite your ankle (if male) or enrich your nights (and your neighbours’) with the song of their people (if female), but I’ve never seen a cat trying to hump a human (or anything other than another cat).
Dogs? Sure. Endangered New Zealand flightless parrots? Yeah. Once. On video. Cats? Not once.
My cat does it. I’ve had him his whole life but I got him fixed terribly late and let’s just say he gets confused. I’ll be holding him like baby like he likes me to do and suddenly he starts twitching and I tell him “you’re being weird you gotta go now” and he grumbles at me and leaves.
My cat hates every other cat it meets, but loves every person it meets. I think it knows the difference.
cats are just basically asexual outside of mating season afaik, whereas either wolves already don’t have a specific mating seasons or dogs just inherited our lack of one…
it’s one of my favourite things about cats, you almost never have to worry about petting them in the wrong place (you know, provided the cat trusts you) nor do you have to worry about a red rocket sighting
That anecdote presents an opposite case.
Your leg breeding your cat? Im confused
I’m not so sure my cats and dogs identify as different species tbh
My cat definitely treats people differently than other cats. She’s not territorial with people, but if she sees a cat outside she gets fussy.
Then why do all cats I have licked back at acted so surprised and offended?
Because amongst cats grooming is a show of dominance.
So my cat’s grooming me is asserting dominance over me? The bitch.
He’s your mom now, dawg
You’re the mom now, cat!
Creepy smooth tongue
You’re not good at licking them it seems
