Your kitty probably tracks where you are in the house

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2021-11-11 06:00

International

Pet cats seem to track their owner’s location and are surprised when their voice appears to come from somewhere else, according to international researchers. The team put cats in a familiar room and played their owner’s voices (or a stranger’s voice) calling the cat’s name from one of two speakers. The team then bamboozled the kitties by playing the sound on another speaker further away, and it seemed to surprise the furry friends. The team says this shows the cats seemed to have a mental representation of where the owner was and were surprised when the owner appeared to move.

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Journal/
conference: PLOS ONE

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Kyoto University, Japan

Funder: This study was financially supported by the Grant-in-aid for Scientific Research (KAKENHI) No. 17J08974, No. 19J01485 to S. Takagi, Nos. 25240020, 26119514, 16H01505, 15K12047, 25118002, and 16H06301 to K. Fujita, No. 25118003 to A. Saito, No. JP16J08691 to H. Chijiiwa, and No. JP16J1034 to M. Arahori from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). Anicom Speciality Medical Institute Inc. provided support in the form of salaries for author M.A, but had no role in study design, data collection or analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section.

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