> While dogs slowed down and hesitated before they attempted to use an uncomfortably small opening, in the case of cats, we did not detect this change in their behavior before their attempt to go through even the narrowest openings. However, remarkably, cats showed hesitation both before they attempted to penetrate the shortest openings, and while they moved through it.
I just skimmed, but I didn’t see any mention whiskers. It’s seems to me that cats can make highly precise measurements of width just by sticking their heads in a space, but height judgments requires additional consideration.
> Cats are also aided by their large and sensitive vibrissae, which are positioned on such locations of their head that the cat can detect nearby obstacles in closer encounters. Vibrissal sensation can compensate for the somewhat weaker vision in cats from closer distances or in poorly illuminated environments. Therefore, it is possible that cats approached the narrow openings in our experiment without differential hesitation, and they could use their vibrissae to assess the suitability of the apertures before penetrating them.
If you have ever put a cone on a cat (which lasts about five minutes), you see they get crazy. They hug the walls.
Their whiskers are a major factor in their perception.
I think they can also dislocate their spine.
My cat likes to sit in what we call his "Buddha" position, with his back bent about 90 degrees, and his paws in front. This seems to be a common position. He'll sit like that for an hour.
I think the cones must also screw up their aural spatial sensation (changing their perception of sound from fairly omni-directional, to seeming like all the sounds are coming from in front of the cone).
I've seen a few people use a soft inflatable or plush collar that's more flat, and doesn't go up around the face, instead of an actual cone. That way the cat's the whiskers aren't disturbed while still preventing the cat from worsening wounds by licking. At least some cats seem to be a lot more tolerant of that style.
Before I had cats, I used to think of them in terms of other animals. What I mean is that a dog or a horse is very defined by its skeletal structure. They are like popsicle stick armatures with some flesh thrown on.
Now I think of cats more like amorphous blobs with some hard bits stuck on. I think anyone who owns a cat will know what I mean by this.
For what it's worth, their hips and shoulders are actually limited in range of motion compared to humans, due to the very high muscle attachment points that are also what make them so amazingly strong and explosive for their small size. But an extremely flexible spine combined with the ability to dislocate key joints means they can still fit into very small, narrow spaces, presumably an adaptation allowing them to hunt small rodents that burrow and hide out in underground dens. Which I assume is why they have the instinct to immediately jump into and check out any box or cabinet or other enclosed space you open. You never know if there might be some voles in there.
They actually prefer to jump in a box because to them, it's a safe space to hide and watch. Cats look for spaces like that because their wild ancestors (and feral cats now) are small enough that they are both predators and prey.
A stray cat I adopted as we could not find his owner was named "Beanbag" (transitioning to "Mr Bean", no reference to the comedian)for exactly this quality.
After a few days of recovery and starting to get comfortable, he started to snooze and literally poured off the couch, like a bag of beans... and he loved to stretch in my lap while I coded, putting up with all the typing & mousing... Truly liquid, indeed! Wonderful little guy, I still miss him.
> If the opportunity was given to them, dogs opted for a detour in the case of uncomfortably small apertures
Except in the case of one very sweet but not exactly brilliant large dog I know that legitimately believes his entire body is just the tip of his nose that he can see. I’ve seen him walk straight through a 2” hole in a screen door, and he will repeatedly try to sit on e.g. a chair armrest and not understand why it doesn’t work.
Black cats are the best. She is one of two sisters (oldest cats at 9 at this point). 17 pounds of chunk loving. Annoying as all get out, but will literally roll around on the arm of the couch and “accidentally” drop into my lap.
My wife and I go between two locations, today will be the first time 4 of the cats meet the murder noodle.
Interesting because I have recently been trying to catch a stray cat for a capture-release process and the cat will not walk into a typical trap-door type wire mesh trap. Watching him on video the roof of the trap seems to freak him out. It seems a better trap would have a narrow gap with high door that lets them confidently walk into the trap and trigger would just block the slot perhaps with some sort of sliding door blocking the exit.
The overhead view of figure 3 in particular is noteworthy to me. The 3 human subjects are represented as abstract ovals, and the cat drawn as a cat who is staring up as if to look through the fourth ceiling at the reader.
The reader becomes, in a sense, a greeble.
This paper would have been a fun project for a scientific illustrator.
For reference, in the cat realm a greeble is what cats are looking at when they stare up at the ceiling or wall and there is nothing there. At least that you can see.
So instead of the real cat staring at the imaginary greeble, we the reader are the real greeble staring at the imaginary cat. Who is staring back because it can see us.
When a cat can go between two openings that are too small for the cat to pass through and the cat isn't being observed is what's interesting though and nobody has yet explained that.
I watched as a cat dove through a narrow opening
(stair baulsters)only to wedge its aft end,stop dead,do a totaly ignoble face plant,and then sort of oooze through to land gracelessly.
So in this case there was no hesitation,and cats
regularly missjudge and get run over by cars,so at best the data is just that...data.
Anecdotally my cat is always very cautious before going through cat flags, which are not particularly narrow but very short, but never hesitate to run into narrow but deep stuff...
The early networks that evolved into the modern Internet were mostly paid for with public funds, and they’re used nowadays mostly to watch cat videos. I don’t see anyone complaining about that /)
When asking these kinds of questions, I always remind myself "The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge" [0].
On the other hand, I believe that researching how animals think, behave and "work" in general, is a very important part of being human. They're alive, too, and they defy tons of prejudice we have about them over and over. We need to revise tons of knowledge about animals and other living things, in general.
Hungarians aren’t brutish optimizers who cut costs and strive for uniformity and blandness; they are not like those philistines that know the cost of everything but the value of nothing. Or else they wouldn’t speak Hungarian.
> While dogs slowed down and hesitated before they attempted to use an uncomfortably small opening, in the case of cats, we did not detect this change in their behavior before their attempt to go through even the narrowest openings. However, remarkably, cats showed hesitation both before they attempted to penetrate the shortest openings, and while they moved through it.
I just skimmed, but I didn’t see any mention whiskers. It’s seems to me that cats can make highly precise measurements of width just by sticking their heads in a space, but height judgments requires additional consideration.
> Cats are also aided by their large and sensitive vibrissae, which are positioned on such locations of their head that the cat can detect nearby obstacles in closer encounters. Vibrissal sensation can compensate for the somewhat weaker vision in cats from closer distances or in poorly illuminated environments. Therefore, it is possible that cats approached the narrow openings in our experiment without differential hesitation, and they could use their vibrissae to assess the suitability of the apertures before penetrating them.
Oh thank you! I’m just a lowly cat owner and did not know what vibrissae are.
If you have ever put a cone on a cat (which lasts about five minutes), you see they get crazy. They hug the walls.
Their whiskers are a major factor in their perception.
I think they can also dislocate their spine.
My cat likes to sit in what we call his "Buddha" position, with his back bent about 90 degrees, and his paws in front. This seems to be a common position. He'll sit like that for an hour.
I think the cones must also screw up their aural spatial sensation (changing their perception of sound from fairly omni-directional, to seeming like all the sounds are coming from in front of the cone).
My cats are weird and loved their cones after they got neutered. One would stick his head back in the cone after I took it off.
4 replies →
I've seen a few people use a soft inflatable or plush collar that's more flat, and doesn't go up around the face, instead of an actual cone. That way the cat's the whiskers aren't disturbed while still preventing the cat from worsening wounds by licking. At least some cats seem to be a lot more tolerant of that style.
1 reply →
From skimming the HN comments:
> Wiskers are mentioned, but using the scientific name - vibrissae
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41870897
Calvin vindicated
https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/04/20
I love C&H and am blown away there was something so applicable. Felt like an XKCD moment!
C&H moments are the original XKCD moments!
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Lol I automatically read C&H as Cyanide and Happiness
My cat woke up, did a big stretch, and yawned. Then she hiccoughed, turned into a small dragon, and coughed up a fireball.
"!!!" I said.
"What?" She shrugged back into cat form.
"You're a shape shifter?"
"All cats are. There's just never any reason to not be a cat."
/src https://mastodon.art/@MicroSFF/112928631782738642
Missing a cite to some pioneering work on this in the 30s by A.S.J. Tessimond [1]
Cats no less liquid than their shadows
Offer no angles to the wind.
They slip, diminished, neat through loopholes
Less than themselves; will not be pinned
[1]https://www.blueridgejournal.com/poems/asjt-cats.htm
Not to mention Fardin, 2014.
Before I had cats, I used to think of them in terms of other animals. What I mean is that a dog or a horse is very defined by its skeletal structure. They are like popsicle stick armatures with some flesh thrown on.
Now I think of cats more like amorphous blobs with some hard bits stuck on. I think anyone who owns a cat will know what I mean by this.
My cat often lays down twisted 180 degrees or more. Just doing whatever they want, defying laws of nature.
Well, dogs also do this—I present to you my majestically twisted creature: https://imgur.com/a/5WcYzSw
I have no clue how that is even possible.
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When I pick up my cat and he's relaxed, it feels like I'm picking up a tube sock full of pudding.
Horse is practically all air. That's their secret. They are blimps with legs.
For what it's worth, their hips and shoulders are actually limited in range of motion compared to humans, due to the very high muscle attachment points that are also what make them so amazingly strong and explosive for their small size. But an extremely flexible spine combined with the ability to dislocate key joints means they can still fit into very small, narrow spaces, presumably an adaptation allowing them to hunt small rodents that burrow and hide out in underground dens. Which I assume is why they have the instinct to immediately jump into and check out any box or cabinet or other enclosed space you open. You never know if there might be some voles in there.
They actually prefer to jump in a box because to them, it's a safe space to hide and watch. Cats look for spaces like that because their wild ancestors (and feral cats now) are small enough that they are both predators and prey.
7 replies →
> You never know if there might be some voles in there
I like to think I always know if there might be some voles in my boxes and cabinets.
1 reply →
A stray cat I adopted as we could not find his owner was named "Beanbag" (transitioning to "Mr Bean", no reference to the comedian)for exactly this quality.
After a few days of recovery and starting to get comfortable, he started to snooze and literally poured off the couch, like a bag of beans... and he loved to stretch in my lap while I coded, putting up with all the typing & mousing... Truly liquid, indeed! Wonderful little guy, I still miss him.
I, for one, know, understand and welcome our almost liquid feline overlords.
Purring bags of mostly water.
These are old news for those of us that grew bonsai kittens in the late 90s.
https://web.archive.org/web/20050203111131/http://bonsaikitt...
Obviously it was a hoax, probably one of the first ones reaching the first generation of internet users. But lots of people fell for it.
Oh but that is old news!
"On the Rheology of Cats":
https://www.drgoulu.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Rheology-...
Now that is what a dry academic paper about cats is supposed to look like. Cat pictures on every page.
> If the opportunity was given to them, dogs opted for a detour in the case of uncomfortably small apertures
Except in the case of one very sweet but not exactly brilliant large dog I know that legitimately believes his entire body is just the tip of his nose that he can see. I’ve seen him walk straight through a 2” hole in a screen door, and he will repeatedly try to sit on e.g. a chair armrest and not understand why it doesn’t work.
Having 7 cats, they are all different. My oldest mail holds himself rigid. The youngest male - still a kitten - is a noodle of murder and destruction.
Nice Description. A black noodle just joined our other 5 cats.
Black cats are the best. She is one of two sisters (oldest cats at 9 at this point). 17 pounds of chunk loving. Annoying as all get out, but will literally roll around on the arm of the couch and “accidentally” drop into my lap.
My wife and I go between two locations, today will be the first time 4 of the cats meet the murder noodle.
> their free-floating, diminutive collarbones allow them to squeeze themselves through very narrow gaps.
Detached collarbones is one of the many interesting things I know about cats because of my cat obsessed kid!
Interesting because I have recently been trying to catch a stray cat for a capture-release process and the cat will not walk into a typical trap-door type wire mesh trap. Watching him on video the roof of the trap seems to freak him out. It seems a better trap would have a narrow gap with high door that lets them confidently walk into the trap and trigger would just block the slot perhaps with some sort of sliding door blocking the exit.
The overhead view of figure 3 in particular is noteworthy to me. The 3 human subjects are represented as abstract ovals, and the cat drawn as a cat who is staring up as if to look through the fourth ceiling at the reader.
The reader becomes, in a sense, a greeble.
This paper would have been a fun project for a scientific illustrator.
For reference, in the cat realm a greeble is what cats are looking at when they stare up at the ceiling or wall and there is nothing there. At least that you can see.
So instead of the real cat staring at the imaginary greeble, we the reader are the real greeble staring at the imaginary cat. Who is staring back because it can see us.
There's no mention of their whiskers, I was under the impression that this is what they use to become aware of their body size in tight spaces.
Wiskers are mentioned, but using the scientific name - vibrissae
When a cat can go between two openings that are too small for the cat to pass through and the cat isn't being observed is what's interesting though and nobody has yet explained that.
I watched as a cat dove through a narrow opening (stair baulsters)only to wedge its aft end,stop dead,do a totaly ignoble face plant,and then sort of oooze through to land gracelessly. So in this case there was no hesitation,and cats regularly missjudge and get run over by cars,so at best the data is just that...data.
This seems relevant: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lastquarte...
This science paper could have been a cat meme video. Never thought I would be saying that and meaning it literally.
I mean I’ve seen the cat challenge meme video done a dozen times.
https://youtu.be/O7PkYkXdKwc?si=-8BTPVvAK19WVEF
This is like “hey what if this cat video was a research paper”
Obligatory Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/catsareliquid/.
This sounds like something Karl Pilkington would come up with.
We need a documentary.
I wonder if the same experiment could be done with big cats - Would an opening that touches the mane of a lion have the same results?
The cat will just get annoyed - it's a shaggy tangly thing that always gets in the way.
Speaking from personal experience >:3
See also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z30eLocTnU
Anecdotally my cat is always very cautious before going through cat flags, which are not particularly narrow but very short, but never hesitate to run into narrow but deep stuff...
This is why they flow out of our grasp.
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The early networks that evolved into the modern Internet were mostly paid for with public funds, and they’re used nowadays mostly to watch cat videos. I don’t see anyone complaining about that /)
I complain about it frequently, actually, in context of commercial use and the "commons" the Internet is founded on.
These things also don't compare.
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Comparing the advent of the internet with a study on the flexibility and agility of cats in tight spaces isn't exactly apples to apples.
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NKFIH, grant # K143077 is not for this study specifically, searching for it reveals a number of studies the same grant supported, such as:
https://figshare.com/articles/media/You_talkin_to_me_Functio...
and
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000632072...
That's right. This study falls under the parent grant entitled:
> Péter Pongrácz: The human as a limited resource - a new paradigm to understand social behavior in dogs (Eötvös Loránd University)
When asking these kinds of questions, I always remind myself "The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge" [0].
On the other hand, I believe that researching how animals think, behave and "work" in general, is a very important part of being human. They're alive, too, and they defy tons of prejudice we have about them over and over. We need to revise tons of knowledge about animals and other living things, in general.
[0]: https://www.ias.edu/sites/default/files/library/UsefulnessHa...
So what exactly is your criteria for when a study should or should not be publicly funded?
16 replies →
Hungarians aren’t brutish optimizers who cut costs and strive for uniformity and blandness; they are not like those philistines that know the cost of everything but the value of nothing. Or else they wouldn’t speak Hungarian.
Even better that it got published in Cell.
Wait until you learn about something called "the military"
FYI, the cats are not literally almost liquid in body composition.
"Almost" is a bit vague and probably too strong, but they are mostly water, just like other mammals.
Therefore they are more properly classified as soups.
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That's a lot of ambiguity for a scientific paper. Even if it's true (Cats are about 60-70% water), that's not the point of the title.
I suspect its because it makes for a catchy headline.
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Here's the podcast: https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/52350e74-f4b0-42d9-a1...