Unlike dogs, which can quite obviously understand individual words of human language, cats remain somewhat aloof animals. Taking fluffy home, we are preparing for the fact that now we will live by his rules, because this is a cat – you can’t really explain anything to him.
However, psychologist Karen McComb from the University of Sussex (UK) decided to still find a way to find a common language with cats. The results of her research were described by Science Alert. It turns out that the main secret is to learn how to smile at your pet, but not in a human way, but in a feline way. The observations that McComb and colleagues made in 2020 show that this helps to find a common language not only with your own pet, but also with unfamiliar animals.
A cat’s smile looks completely different from a human’s. Cats do not show their teeth, but sickeningly narrow their eyes and slowly blink their eyelids to each other and to people. By the way, our eyes also become narrower when we smile. The researcher, who owns cats herself, already knew the gesture, but decided to test its meaning against scientific standards. She and her colleagues conducted two experiments.
The first experiment involved 21 cats from 14 different households. In it, the owners blinked their animals slowly. As soon as the cat settled comfortably in one of the favorite places of his house, the person, according to the conditions of the experiment, sat down at a distance of about 1 meter from her, established eye contact with the animal and began to blink slowly. The cameras recorded the face of both the owner and the cat.
The results were compared to how cats blink without humans. It turned out that furries were more likely to blink their human in response to a similar gesture compared to the state when they were not in the interaction.
The second experiment included 24 cats from eight different households. This time, it was not the owners who blinked, but researchers who had not previously been in contact with the cat. The reaction of cats to a person who did not clip when looking at an animal was taken as a control.
Next, the scientists made the same gesture as in the first experiment, but added to it a hand extended to the cat. And it turned out that the animals not only more readily responded to blinking, but also approached the stranger’s hand more often after exchanging “cat smiles.” “This study is the first experimental study of the role of slow blinking in communication between cats and humans,” McComb said.
According to the researcher, anyone can try to repeat this trick with their cat at home or with animals on the street. Scientists explained this gesture as a manifestation of friendly intentions. It is believed that cats perceive direct, continuous eye contact as a threat. If you soften it with such a “smile”, they react much more favorably. “Understanding the positive ways cats and humans interact can improve public understanding of cats, improve their well-being and tell us more about the social-cognitive abilities of this little-studied species,” said psychologist Tasmin Humphrey from the University of Sussex.
Previously, GLOBAL HAPPENINGS told how to determine by behavior that a cat is under stress and help him overcome the problem.
Source: Obozrevatel
I work as a news website author and mostly cover the opinion section. I have been writing since I was a teenager, and have always enjoyed telling stories. I studied journalism at university and loved every minute of it. After graduating, I decided to move to London and take up a position with a Global Happenings. It has been an incredible experience, learning about all sorts of different cultures and meeting some amazing people. My goal is to continue learning and growing in my career so that I can provide readers with the best possible content.
