Domestic cats (Felis catus) discriminate their names from other words

Atsuko Saito,Toshikazu Hasegawa,Yuki Ito,Kazutaka Shinozuka

doi:10.1038/s41598-019-40616-4

Atsuko Saito, Toshikazu Hasegawa + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-40616-4

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Abstract

Two of the most common nonhuman animals that interact with humans are domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) and cats (Felis catus). In contrast to dogs, the ability of domestic cats to communicate with humans has not been explored thoroughly. We used a habituation-dishabituation method to investigate whether domestic cats could discriminate human utterances, which consisted of cats’ own names, general nouns, and other cohabiting cats’ names. Cats from ordinary households and from a ‘cat café’ participated in the experiments. Among cats from ordinary households, cats habituated to the serial presentation of four different general nouns or four names of cohabiting cats showed a significant rebound in response to the subsequent presentation of their own names; these cats discriminated their own names from general nouns even when unfamiliar persons uttered them. These results indicate that cats are able to discriminate their own names from other words. There was no difference in discrimination of their own names from general nouns between cats from the cat café and household cats, but café cats did not discriminate their own names from other cohabiting cats’ names. We conclude that cats can discriminate the content of human utterances based on phonemic differences.

Highlights

Two of the most common nonhuman animals that interact with humans are domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) and cats (Felis catus)
Domestic cats (Felis catus) and dogs (Canis familiaris) are the most popular companion animals; worldwide, over 600 million cats live with humans[1], and in some countries their number equals or exceeds the number of dogs (e.g., Japan: dogs: 8,920,000, cats: 9,526,000)[2,3]
In Experiments 1, 3, and 4, cats that habituated to general nouns with the same length and accent as their own names dishabituated to their own names. This was true both when their owner’s voice was presented (Experiments 1 and 3) and when the unfamiliar person’s voice was presented (Experiment 4), in spite of the fact that cats distinguish owners’ voices from unfamiliar persons’ voices[17]. These results show that cats can identify their own names from other words that consisted of the same number of mora but with different phonemes when they are uttered both by familiar person and by unfamiliar person

Summary

Introduction

Two of the most common nonhuman animals that interact with humans are domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) and cats (Felis catus). Among cats from ordinary households, cats habituated to the serial presentation of four different general nouns or four names of cohabiting cats showed a significant rebound in response to the subsequent presentation of their own names; these cats discriminated their own names from general nouns even when unfamiliar persons uttered them. These results indicate that cats are able to discriminate their own names from other words. The ability to understand human verbal utterances is shown in other species, such as apes[33], dolphins[34], and parrots[35]; whether such an ability exists in domestic cats remains untested

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