According to a scientific study, cats have surprising abilities to understand the environment around them. And they would do even better than toddlers. But up to what age?
Our child is (as in the eyes of all parents) the most beautiful and intelligent in the world. So when a study reveals that our pet understands things better than our offspring, it may seem difficult to take. According to a Japanese study led by Professor Saho Takagi of Abazu University and published in Nature Scientific Report, cats have an easier time understanding things than a young child.
To reach this conclusion, the researcher compared the reactions of around thirty cats and those of children aged 8 to 14 months. For example, he presented them with simple images like an apple, for example, calling it by an invented name. The result: some cats showed clear signs of confusion when the name seemed incorrect, with a surprising ability to learn and understand what was said to them.
According to the study, cats therefore have an intelligence comparable to that of a child of around a year and a half. “I was very surprised, because this meant that cats were able to listen to human conversations and understand words without any special reward-based training” said the researcher. “Most cats habituated to the stimulus association after four trials, meaning they received 9 seconds of exposure over the course of two trials for each picture-word pair. The cats also showed signs of puzzlement when they noticed a difference, spending on average 33% more time looking at the screen when this occurred.
But parents can rest assured, children very quickly outgrow these little balls of fur as they grow, particularly when they acquire language. This study should still make it possible to confirm what cat owners observe on a daily basis: the fact that little felines understand many things and that they try every day to decipher what we say to them,… And this, more than one might think.