Credits: Social Media
Want your cat to like you? Turns out it’s all about the eyes
Communication is key, and your cat may be picking up more than you suspect.
Domestic animals are sensitive to human cues, whether it be the words we use to communicate with them or the way we look at them. Sometimes you can pick up on how a cat feels towards someone by the way it sleeps, and 5 behaviors can signal that your pet cat has seen a ghost, apparently. When bonding with pets, the rest is in the eyes and ears.
Slow blinking among cats is a form of positive emotional communication
A lot of domestic animals spend more time with humans than they do with other animals. Over time, this has a huge impact on their behaviors habits� and communication styles.
If youre a cat owner, or if youve spent much time with pet cats, youll no doubt be familiar with the so-called slow blink. �
These long, drawn-out blinks tend to involve a few half-blinks, one after the other, followed by a long one, which can either be a full blink or a long half-blink.
According to a study published in Scientific Reports, cats are more likely to do these half-blink sequences when a human does it to them. This means it’s not (solely) a self-serving behavior �it means something.
Not only this but if you initiate a slow-blink interaction with a cat and the cat reciprocates, theyre more likely to approach you.
In other words, having a slow blink-off with a cat seems to be a way to bond with them. If you do it, theyll likely do it back, and blinking at each other in this way often leads cats to initiate physical contact.
Cats are surprisingly good at language, too
A new study published in October 2024 proves wrong anyone who said cats dont listen to us when we talk to them.
Japanese researchers used flashcards to show that cats learn to make associations between words and objects. Not only did they find cats were capable of impressive picture-word association, but they were able to learn which words matched which images in less than half the time it took human babies to do the same in a separate study.
Our results reveal that cats make associations with even less exposure [than human babies], wrote the researchers. However, they admit that its not clear why they make so many associations so quickly.
But it makes sense that they can learn these types of associations, one evolutionary psychologist told Science.org. Theyve spent 10,000 years being selectively bred to make desirable companions.�
Nevertheless, one of the studys authors says she was very surprised by the results because they “meant cats were able to eavesdrop on human conversations and understand words without any special reward-based training.
What has your cat overheard from your conversations, I wonder?
