Researchers strapped video cameras on 16 cats and let them do their thing. Here's what they found

[Demovictory9]

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/05/researchers-strapped-video-cameras-16-cats-and-let-them-do-their-thing-here-s-what-they


Q: Did the videos reveal any surprises?

A: Cats are seen as relatively lazy, especially compared to dogs. But we saw that when they were outside, they became superalert. They scanned their surroundings, sometimes for a half-hour or more on end. And even though cats are highly territorial, they didn’t always fight with other cats they encountered. Often, they just sat a couple of meters away from each other for up to a half an hour. They may have been sizing each other up. Sometimes they would engage in a greeting, briefly touching noses.

When they were in their homes, the cats spent a lot of time following their humans around. They liked to be in the same room. A lot of my students were surprised at how attached cats were to people.

Q: How do you hope this work will be applied?

A: I hope more people put cameras on cats to understand their behavior. There is also debate over whether cats should be kept indoors all the time. If we find that cats seem more bored or stressed out when kept indoors—for example, by pacing, like some animals do at the zoo—that means we need to think more about enriching their indoor lives, or giving them some outside time.

Q: You thank the study cats in the paper’s Acknowledgements section. Why?

A: I always acknowledge the animals I work with. I’ve been doing that since my Ph.D. thesis. I do feel thankful because if the cats didn’t oblige us, we couldn’t do the study.

[marylandblue]

1. Typical: Researcher has to thank the cats to get them to cooperate.

Dogs thank you just for being you.

[pazzyanne]

2. Do you have a cat or cats?

Please don't disparage them. I have lived with cats my entire life, and have found them to be as loyal and compassionate as the dogs in my life. You do have to learn their ways and respect who they are. Shouldn't we do the same for the dogs we live with?

[marylandblue]

5. I love cats. I used to have them. Now I have a dog.

I just like to joke about the different personalities of cats vs dogs.

[pazzyanne]

14. .

[PatrickforO]

11. We've had dogs and cats.

The dogs tend to think you a god.

The cats, well, not so much.

But consider this creed:
We are born, though we did not ask to be.
If we are lucky there will be one adult (or more) who cares about us.
If we are really lucky, we live in a loving family.
If we are even more lucky, we have the privilege of getting a decent education.

And then we work for fifty years, start a family, raise kids, become grandparents, build a career and so on.

Toward the end of that, most of us come down with some horrible, twisting, agonizing disease that saps our very humanity.

Because we have not been kind enough to each other to extend universal healthcare, as the disease eats your body away, the medical 'establishment' eats away your assets.

Finally, stripped of assets, you go to a nursing home, funded by Medicaid, where your caregivers earn close to minimum wage, because we don't place a big priority on old people.

Then, you die, and when you leave this world, you are naked and without possessions, the same as when you came.

*********************

So, what you ask, keeps me going with a philosophy like this? Four things:
1. Love for my wife, children and grandchildren.
2. Devotion to a cause greater than myself.
3. Spiritual alchemy.
4. Kittens.

Seriously. We have five cats now. The oldest is 18. The middle pair (from the same litter) are 7, and the youngest pair (also from the same litter, rescues) are kittens. I think they are around 16 weeks at this point - a precious little Siamese and a tortoise shell.

I love kittens.

[cstanleytech]

16. Be careful with those kittens as I have heard over exposure to them can melt a persons brain.

[PatrickforO]

17. Huh?....(drooling)

They do. They are the most precious little animals. The first day we got them, we thought they might have some kind of crawlers, so my wife got some kitten shampoo and she was shampooing the little female tortoise shell first, and she was of course yowling.

Well, her brother, the little Siamese, climbed all the way up my wife's back to try and rescue his sister.

He's such an awesome little guy, just filled with personality.

Their story is someone left three of them from the same litter in a barn to die. One froze to death, but we rescued these two and they are such happy little animals. They both are really snuggly and purr loudly.

And, you know, my wife is brilliant - she had a whole plan of separating the cats for the first couple days, but letting them interact from opposite sides of a door. Then we have a cat gate in the door to our master bedroom, and we put a baby gate over that. Several interactions that way, until they all lost interest and it was no big deal.

Finally, we brought the kittens out to interact with our Alpha male and that went well

The result? No worries. The cats are all getting along fine.

Sorry...didn't mean to be verbose.

[cstanleytech]

18. Hmm I am down from 4 cats and a dog down to 1 cat. Been thinking of adopting a new dog or

cat but not sure though if I had the money I would love to get a papillon puppy but unfortunately people want an arm and a leg for them and there is no way in hell I could ever afford one.

[burrowowl]

3. Need to get a cat cam

[tclambert]

10. You will learn more about licking your own butthole than you ever wanted to know.

[PatrickforO]

12. LOL, indeed you will!

[Marthe48]

4. I recently thought about a camera

I have 3 indoor cats and I'd love to see what they do when I'm asleep. They are all quirky

I do notice that they like to hang out with me. My husband noticed that the boy cat always has a line of sight to both of the girl cats. Cat triangulation. lol

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

20. I strapped a camera to my wife when I went to work.

You can find the resulting video on Pornhub.

[TheDemsshouldhireme]

6. Have had cats my whole life

Never believed in keeping them indoors unless you were living in a city. Going outside is part of who they are and seems to be good for their head as per this article.

[PatrickforO]

13. We live in the suburbs to the south of a major urban area.

We've lost three cats to coyotes so far.

The first two just disappeared, but left behind hair and blood.

The last one, well...that one was horrible.

So after that, we decided to keep our cats indoors.

We do have a good sized multi-level house, though, and have a bunch of cat trees and so on.

And, we get kittens in pairs because they don't get as bored.

[ChazInAz]

19. I'm in Tucson

My cats used to be indoor/outdoor guys, until I lost my Siamese to a hawk. When I noticed hawks and owls on my rooftop and fence, eyeing the survivors, the cats got moved permanently inside. My Savannah cat, Hastur The Unspeakable, gets taken out for walkies on a leash, occasionally. Though the "walks" are more like "lying down in the sun and sleeping while tied to the human"!

[PatrickforO]

21. LOL yeah that cat on a leash thing is really funny.

In my experience you don't take a cat for a 'walk.' When you hook that leash on it becomes taking the cat for a 'drag.' At least my cats really, really hate being on a leash. We don't even collar them since they are indoor. Cause, man, when that collar goes on for the first time, it's a real trauma-fest.

Sorry about the hawks. Beautiful birds if you are a human, but for a small animal like a cat, not so much.

But, hey, if the hawks get too bad, you can always summon Cthulhu.

Or perhaps we should do that to get rid of Trump...

[erronis]

7. The cats hang out with us humans only because we feed them on demand. The dogs

actually understand schedules.

No question that the cats are smarter than the dogs or humans.

[Nitram]

24. We feed our cats twice a day, at 7:00 AM and at 5:00 PM.

They know exactly when it is time to eat and let us know right on schedule if we forget. Some cats will get very overweight if fed on demand.

[Kurt V.]

26. are they strictly indoors? we keep the food bowls filled but our cats spend most of their time out

doors. freaking killers, they are.

[Nitram]

27. We used to have outdoor cats, but they not only killed too many songbirds, they also

brought birds, flying squirrels, shrews, and mice in through the cat door, alive, presumably to give us something to play with. They stay a lot healthier indoors, not being exposed to the fleas, parasites, and diseases of their prey and neighborhood cats.

[Kurt V.]

28. i can see where that would be a big problem. we've designated half of our 2 car garage just for

them ( no cat door into house ) . i park in the drive. lol. all 3 cats were living outside before 'rescued them' and we coaxed them in. we're in the country. they get regular vet visits and are healthy.

[Nitram]

29. We're in the country, too, and there are coyotes out there. I really doubt a coyote could catch one

of our cats. That's what trees are for.

[Kurt V.]

30. i worry about the coyotes too and the neighbors that let their dogs roam everywhere.

but cats are smarter and the article notes how aware of the surroundings they are.

[The Genealogist]

31. I've had several cats in my life

My current feline friend, Eula, is much different from others I have had. Eula is very attached to my partner and me. If I go down to the basement, and she is all alone upstairs, she will caterwaul til I come back up stairs. I work from home, and my partner works part time, and she is usually in the room with one or the other of us. She is sleeping in the chair next to me now. The cats I have had in the past seemed to appear only when hungry, at which point they were your best friend, or when it was chilly in the house and wanted to sleep on the bed with me.

[nuxvomica]

8. "the cats spent a lot of time following their humans around"

Like this is surprising! They follow the humans around because humans (a) have the power to produce noms, (b) have figured out door knobs, (c) frequently open boxes (!), and (d) hold those sticks with strings that dangle those satiny, nip-stuffed goldfish.

[klook]

15. Humans also have laps. (nt)

[Nitram]

25. Our cats hate it when we are on the other side of a closed door.

I love they way they put their title paws under the door and feel around, inviting us to play.

[Sneederbunk]

9. How much time did cats spend trying to remove camera?

[Haggis for Breakfast]

22. I would LOVE to see more than just three minutes of this.

[Demovictory9]

23. me too