Study Reveals a Simple Technique to Communicate With Your Cat
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience.
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience.
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Generate Key Takeaways
A cat squints its eyes while laying on a bed.
Cats have a reputation for aloofness (and flooffiness), but if you and your feline friend aren't bonding, maybe you're just not speaking their language.
Never fear – research from 2020 has shown that it's not so difficult. You just need to smile at them more. Not the human way, by baring your teeth, but the cat way, by narrowing your eyes and blinking slowly.
By observing cat-human interactions, scientists confirmed that this expression makes cats – both familiar and strange – approach and be more receptive to humans.
"As someone who has both studied animal behavior and is a cat owner, it's great to be able to show that cats and humans can communicate in this way," Karen McComb, a University of Sussex psychologist, said in a 2020 statement.
"It's something that many cat owners had already suspected, so it's exciting to have found evidence for it."
If you've spent any time around cats, you've probably seen their 'partially closed eyes' facial expressions, accompanied by slow blinking. It's similar to how human eyes narrow when smiling and usually occurs when the puss is relaxed and content. The expression is interpreted as a kind of cat smile.
Anecdotal evidence from cat owners has hinted that humans can copy this expression to communicate to cats that we are friendly and open to interaction. So, a team of psychologists designed two experiments to determine whether cats behaved differently towards slow–blinking humans.
In the first experiment, owners slow-blinked at 21 cats from 14 different households. Once the cat was settled and comfy in one spot in their home environment, the owners were instructed to sit about 1 meter away and slow-blink when the cat was looking at them. Cameras recorded both the owner's and the cat's faces, and the results were compared to how cats blink with no human interaction.
The results showed that cats are more likely to slow-blink at their humans after their humans have slow–blinked at them, compared to the no–interaction condition.
The second experiment included 24 cats from eight different households. This time, it wasn't the owners doing the blinking but the researchers, who'd had no prior contact with the cat. For a control, the cats were recorded responding to a no–blink condition, in which humans stared at the cats without blinking their eyes.
The researchers performed the same slow–blink process as the first experiment, adding an extended hand toward the cat. And they found that not only were the cats more likely to blink back, but they were also more likely to approach the human's hand after the human blinked.
"This study is the first to experimentally investigate the role of slow blinking in cat-human communication," McComb said.
"And it is something you can try yourself with your own cat at home or with cats you meet in the street. It's a great way of enhancing the bond you have with cats. Try narrowing your eyes at them as you would in a relaxed smile, followed by closing your eyes for a couple of seconds. You'll find they respond in the same way themselves, and you can start a sort of conversation."
Dogs may be much more enthusiastically demonstrative than cats, but this news isn't a surprise for cat lovers. Research in recent years has shown that our feline friends are much more in tune with their human housemates than previously supposed and that comparing them to dogs is a disservice.
Cats, for example, respond in kind to humans who are receptive to them – so if you find cats standoffish, that might be a problem with you, not the kitty. Likewise, cats echo the personality traits of the humans they live with – this may be related to why cats seem to pick up when their humans are sad. They also can recognize their names (although they choose to ignore them a lot of the time). And their bonds with their humans are surprisingly deep.
It's difficult to know why cats slow–blink at humans this way. It's been interpreted as a means of signaling benign intentions since cats are thought to interpret unbroken staring as threatening. But it's also possible that cats developed the expression since humans respond positively to it. With domesticated animals, it's often impossible to tell.
Either way, it does seem to help forge a rapport. And that's a good thing to know. Learning how to improve our relationships with these enigmatic animals could also be a way to improve their emotional health – not just in the home environment but across a range of potentially stressful situations.
"Understanding positive ways in which cats and humans interact can enhance public understanding of cats, improve feline welfare, and tell us more about the socio-cognitive abilities of this under-studied species," said psychologist Tasmin Humphrey of the University of Sussex.
"Our findings could potentially be used to assess the welfare of cats in a variety of settings, including veterinary practices and shelters."
You're going to try it right now, aren't you?
The research was published in Scientific Reports.
An earlier version of this article was published in October 2020.
Related News
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNN
31 minutes ago
- CNN
First evidence of ‘living towers' made of worms discovered in nature
Nature seems to offer an escape from the hustle and bustle of city life, but the world at your feet may tell another story. Even in the shade of a fruit tree, you could be surrounded by tiny skyscrapers — not made of steel or concrete, but of microscopic worms wriggling and writhing into the shape of long, vertical towers. Even though these miniature architects, called nematodes, are found all over Earth's surface, scientists in Germany recently witnessed their impressive building techniques in nature for the first time. After months of closely inspecting rotten pears and apples in local orchards, researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the University of Konstanz were able to spot hundreds of the 1-millimeter-long (0.04-inch) worms climbing onto one another, amassing structures up to 10 times their individual size. Related video Rare video shows 12 sharks co-feed socially To learn more about the mysterious physics of the soft, slimy towers, the study team brought samples of nematodes called Caenorhabditis elegans into a lab and analyzed them. There, the scientists noticed the worms could assemble in a matter of hours, with some reaching out from the twisting mass as exploratory 'arms' sensing the environment and building accordingly. But why the worms formed the structures wasn't immediately clear. The team's findings, published Thursday in the journal Current Biology, show that even the smallest animals can prompt big questions about the evolutionary purpose of social behaviors. 'What we got was more than just some worms standing on top of each other,' said senior study author Serena Ding, a Max Planck research group leader of genes and behavior. 'It's a coordinated superorganism, acting and moving as a whole.' To find out what was motivating the nematodes' building behavior, the study team tested the worms' reactions to being poked, prodded and even visited by a fly — all while stacked in a tower formation. 'We saw that they are very reactive to the presence of a stimulus,' said the study's first author, Daniela Perez, who is a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior. 'They sense it, and then the tower goes towards this stimulus, attaching itself to our metal pick or a fly buzzing around.' This coordinated reaction suggests the hungry nematodes may be joining together to easily hitch a ride on larger animals such as insects that transport them to (not so) greener pastures with more rotten fruit to feast on, Perez said. 'If you think about it, an animal that is 1 millimeter long cannot just crawl all the way to the next fruit 2 meters (6.6 feet) away. It could easily die on the way there, or be eaten by a predator,' Perez explained. Nematodes are capable of hitchhiking solo too, she added, but arriving to a new area in a group may allow them to continue reproducing. The structures themselves may also serve as a mode of transport, as evidenced by how some worms formed bridges across gaps within the petri dishes to get from one surface to another, Perez noted. 'This discovery is really exciting,' said Orit Peleg, an associate professor of computer science who studies living systems at the University of Colorado Boulder's BioFrontiers Institute. 'It's both establishing the ecological function of creating a tower, and it really opens up the door to do more controlled experimentation to try to understand the perceptual world of these organisms, and how they communicate within a large group.' Peleg was not involved in the study. As the next step, Perez said her team would like to learn whether the formation of these structures is a cooperative or competitive behavior. In other words, are the towering nematodes behaving socially to help each other out, or are their towers more akin to a Black Friday sale stampede? Studying the behaviors of other self-assembling creatures could offer clues to the social norms of nematodes and help answer this question, Ding said. Ants, which assemble to form buoyant rafts to survive floodwaters, are among the few creatures known to team up like nematodes, said David Hu, a professor of mechanical engineering and biology at Georgia Tech. Hu was not involved in the study. 'Ants are incredibly sacrificial for one another, and they do not generally fight within the colony,' Hu said. 'That's because of their genetics. They all come from the same queen, so they are like siblings.' Like ants, nematodes didn't appear to display any obvious role differentiation or hierarchy within the tower structures, Perez said. Each worm from the base to the top of the structure was equally mobile and strong, indicating no competition was at play. However, the lab-cultivated worms were basically clones of one another, so it's not clear whether role differentiation occurs more often in nature, where nematode populations could have more genetic differences, she noted. Additionally, socially cooperative creatures tend to use some form of communication, Peleg said. In the case of ants, it may be their pheromone trails, while honeybees rely on their ritual dance routines and slime molds use their pulsing chemical signals. With nematodes, however, it's still not clear how they might communicate — or if they are communicating at all, Ding said. 'The next steps for (the team) are really just choosing the next questions to ask.' Notably, there has been a lot of interest in studying cooperative animal behaviors among the robotics community, Hu said. It's possible that one day, he added, information about the complex sociality of creatures like nematodes could be used to inform how technology, such as computer servers or drone systems, communicates.
The Drive
32 minutes ago
- The Drive
After 66 Years of the Same Old Seatbelt, Volvo Tries Something New
The latest car news, reviews, and features. The electric 2026 Volvo EX60 will be the Swedish automaker's first model to feature its new 'multi-adaptive safety belts.' This new-gen seat belt is designed to more effectively protect you in an accident with a rapid download of impending-crash data from external and internal sensors, optimizing for everything from impact speed to your posture while driving. Modern seat belts are more complicated than they might look—it's not just a ribbon of fabric stapling you into your seat. In any car, pretensioners cinch up on you in extreme deceleration, and load limiters tactically release tension to prevent the belt from hurting you. In most cars made in the last couple of decades, crash sensors communicate with the airbags and speed sensors for some range of load-limiting force adjustment. Volvo holds the honor of having introduced the now-ubiquitous three-point belt to the auto industry. Its 1959 invention is credited to Nils Bohlin. Back then, Volvo described the function of the belt: '[it] effectively, and in a physiologically favorable manner, prevents the body of the strapped person being thrown forward.' That patent was released to the public, and basically every automaker ultimately adopted it. Now, Volvo's taking that same mission, and the systemization of safety equipment, further with the multi-adaptive belt (which, surprisingly, does not have an acronym or cool-sounding proprietary brand name). Building on the idea of pretensioners and load limiters, the EX60's belts will integrate an immense amount of information—about the vehicle and passenger—to more effectively protect whoever's in the seats. An isolated view of the new belt. Volvo From the outside, vehicle direction and speed are factored in. From the inside, the EX60 will include passenger height, weight, and even posture to calculate how best to hold its passengers. 'For example, a larger occupant in a serious crash will receive a higher belt load setting to help reduce the risk of head injury. While a smaller occupant in a milder crash will receive a lower belt load setting to reduce the risk of rib fractures,' Volvo said. While Volvo's traditional seat belt has three different load-limiting profiles it can apply, this new setup has 11. That's certainly a lot more precision in the care of your body in a crash, though it's tough to extrapolate exactly how much injury reduction that will lead to. This quick teaser from Volvo's ES90 reveal video is all we've really seen of the upcoming EX60 so far. Volvo With the EX60, Volvo's promising to continuously evolve the operating scheme of the system as it gathers more real-world crash data, and apply improved logic via over-the-air updates. 'As Volvo Cars gathers more data and insights, the car can improve its understanding of the occupants, new scenarios and response strategies,' the brand stated. I haven't fallen in love with the idea of feeding my telemetry to the company that sold me my car, but this kind of safety innovation does make a case for it. Seat belts are something you never think about until you really need them. And if that ever happens, you're going to want the smartest seat belt ever engineered. Got a tip? Send us a note at tips@
Medscape
an hour ago
- Medscape
MHRA Urges Contraception With GLP-1 Weight-Loss Drugs
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has reiterated that women using weight-loss drugs must use effective contraception, as the risks of these drugs to a foetus remain unclear. The warning follows concerns that some users in the UK may not be taking glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1s) safely. To date, the MHRA has received more than 40 reports relating to pregnancies in women taking these medications. 'These medicines must not be taken during pregnancy, while trying to get pregnant, or during breastfeeding,' the MHRA stated. Women who become pregnant while using these drugs should stop treatment immediately and consult a healthcare professional. There is not enough safety data to determine if the drugs could harm a developing baby, the agency said. Avoid Unregulated Sellers, MHRA Warns The MHRA also warned against buying these drugs from unregulated sources such as beauty salons or via social media. 'Not only does this expose people wanting to lose weight to serious health risks, it is also against the law to sell these medicines in this way,' said Dr Alison Cave, the MHRA's chief safety officer. The agency emphasised that weight-loss drugs should not be taken without first consulting a healthcare professional. 'The only way to guarantee receiving a genuine GLP-1 medicine is to obtain it from a legitimate pharmacy,' Cave said. Pharmacies Seeing High Demand 'Community pharmacies have been experiencing unprecedented levels of interest for weight loss injections,' said Jasmine Shah, medication safety officer at the National Pharmacy Association. 'It is therefore important that regulations and guidance keep pace with this demand.' Mounjaro May Lower Effectiveness of Oral Contraceptives The MHRA noted that Mounjaro (tirzepatide) may reduce the effectiveness of oral contraceptives in people with overweight or obesity. Women taking Mounjaro should use a non-oral contraceptive method for 4 weeks after starting the drug and for 4 weeks after any dose increase. This advice applies only to Mounjaro users. Patients are also advised to be alert for signs of acute pancreatitis. Risks in Pregnancy Remain Unclear 'There is hardly any available data from human studies to be able to advise if these weight loss drugs are safe in pregnancy,' said Rebecca Reynolds, professor of metabolic medicine at the University of Edinburgh. 'The data from animal studies suggests the potential for harm with low birthweight and skeletal abnormalities, though more evidence is needed to assess if there are risks of taking these drugs in humans,' she told the Science Media Centre (SMC). Dr Bassel Wattar, consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist at Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals, supported the MHRA's warning. 'There is some data from animal studies suggesting there is a risk of malformation to the foetus — in animals falling pregnant while taking GLP-1 agonists — but data remains limited in humans,' he said. However, Dr Caroline Ovadia, senior clinical lecturer in obstetrics at the University of Edinburgh, noted to the SMC that existing human cohort studies had not shown clear evidence of harm. Online Buyers May Miss Safety Guidance Although direct evidence linking GLP-1 drugs to contraceptive failure is limited, the high number of users means even a small risk could have public health implications, experts warned. Professor Ying Cheong, consultant in reproductive medicine at the University of Southampton, speaking to the SMC, said that gastrointestinal side effects, such as vomiting and diarrhoea, could impair oral contraceptive absorption, increasing the risk of unintended pregnancy. 'Many people are buying weight loss drugs online and so may not receive this important advice about contraception,' Reynolds pointed out. 'These are not harmless lifestyle drugs,' stressed Cheong. 'The public urgently needs to understand that these medications require proper medical supervision to avoid unintended harm, particularly to reproductive health.'
