Assessing cats’ (Felis catus) sensitivity to human pointing gestures.

Abstract

A wide range of nonhuman animal species has been shown to be able to respond to human referential signals, such as pointing gestures. The aim of the present study was to replicate previous findings showing cats to be sensitive to human pointing cues (Miklósi et al., 2005). In our study, we presented two types of human pointing gestures-momentary ipsilateral (direct pointing) and momentary cross-body pointing. We tested nine rescue cats in a two-way object-choice task. On a group level, the success rate of cats was 74.4%. Cats performed significantly above chance level in both the ipsilateral and cross-body pointing conditions. Trial number, rewarded side, and type of gesture did not significantly affect the cats' performances in the experiment. On an individual level, five out of seven cats who completed 20 trials performed significantly above chance level. Two cats only completed 10 trials. One of them succeeded in eight and the other in six of these trials. The results of our study replicate previous findings of cats being responsive to human ipsilateral pointing cues and add additional knowledge about their ability to follow cross-body pointing cues. Our results highlight that a domestic species, socialized in a group setting, may possess heterospecific communication skills. Further research is needed to exclude alternative parsimonious explanations, such as local and stimulus enhancements. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).