Cats can associate pictures with words about four times faster than toddlers.
This is what a recent study, published on October 4 in Scientific Reports, has found out.
The research highlights that while humans mainly rely on language for communication, other species, including cats, also show significant language comprehension abilities.
Previous studies have shown that some animals, like apes and African gray parrots, can understand spoken words. Dogs are known to respond to simple commands, but less is understood about cats.
Dr. Carlo Siracusa from the University of Pennsylvania noted that cats can recognize spoken words and interact with humans to solve problems. Recent findings suggest that cats can also recognize their names and those of familiar people and animals.
To explore cats’ ability to link words and images, Saho Takagi and her team at Azabu University conducted an experiment with 31 adult cats.
They used a word game involving two nine-second video clips, each labeled with a made-up word. After observing the clips, the cats showed confusion when the pairings were switched, indicating they had formed associations between the words and images.
Remarkably, cats learned these connections after just two short exposures, while toddlers needed at least four longer trials.
However, Dr. Siracusa warned against overinterpreting these results, as the study compared adult animals to immature human toddlers. He suggested that comparisons with other domestic animals, like dogs, may be more informative.
Despite the study’s limitations — such as the difficulty in engaging cats — the findings indicate that cats can form associations between words and images, raising questions about the origins of this ability, whether it is innate or a result of domestication.
