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aaron_agonistes
2009-06-18 05:10 pm UTC (link)

She tested the thought processes of 15 of them by attaching fish and biscuit treats to one end of a piece of string, placing them under a plastic screen to make them unreachable and then seeing if the cats could work out that pulling on the other end of the string would pull the treat closer.

...unlike dogs (which Osthaus has previously tested) no cat consistently chose correctly between two parallel strings. With two crossed strings, one cat always made the wrong choice and others succeeded no more than might be expected by chance.

Okay, she missed two key points here. One, she put a string under a thing. That makes it mind-blowingly interesting, no matter what might be attached to the other end. And two, like other people have said, cats are picky about their treats, and I'll bet money that the cats in this test weren't hungry.

"If we know their limits we won't expect too much of them, which in turn is important for their welfare. I am not trying to say cats are stupid, just they are different. We are so anthropomorphic we can't see the world through their eyes."

No, you've anthropomorphized them so much that you expect a cat to behave like a person. Bad scientist. Bad. No biscuit.

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	anarchicq 2009-06-18 05:12 pm UTC (link)
	No, you've anthropomorphized them so much that you expect a cat to behave like a person. Bad scientist. Bad. No biscuit. FUCKIN FURRIES!!!! (Reply to this)(Parent)

gairid
2009-06-18 05:40 pm UTC (link)

she put a string under a thing. That makes it mind-blowingly interesting, no matter what might be attached to the other end.

This FTW. We have six cats and none of them can resist a string/pen/finger/whatever under something else (in this house especially under newspaper, OMG).

Zoe, Queen of the Cats in This House remarked casually to me after reading the artile that it was a Very Good Thing that the Scientist lived so far away.

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	registeredreddd 2009-06-18 08:03 pm UTC (link)
	Feet. Under the bedclothes. Every. Single. Night. The dog is tired of being woken up by me being woken up by the cat and has taken to preemptively growling at him, waking me up. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	dragonfangirl 2009-06-21 08:33 am UTC (link)
	Bed mice! (Reply to this)(Parent)

	tree 2009-06-18 05:45 pm UTC (link)
	she put a string under a thing. That makes it mind-blowingly interesting, no matter what might be attached to the other end I love this! (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	ecchaniz0r 2009-06-18 06:28 pm UTC (link)
	THIS. Good GRAVY, doctor. It's a string, they are cats, that should be ALL you need to know. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	tachikoma01 2009-06-18 06:59 pm UTC (link)
	Actually, my first thought on reading about this experiment was "... I wonder if I could build one of those for my cats. If I put out like ten strings but only one had a treat on it, it'd keep them busy for hours." (Reply to this)(Parent)

telegramsam
2009-06-22 09:31 pm UTC (link)

THIS.

Small sample size (15? Gimme a break) + Serious lack of understanding of feline behavior = shitty non-scientific study.

Cats can connect immediate consequences with actions, so long is there is not a time lag between them. Otherwise dousing them with the water bottle would do nothing to stop most of them from clawing the furniture/jumping on the kitchen counter/etc. Cats ARE trainable (well most of them, some just don't care), and that alone proves they have at least some basic concept of cause and effect.

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