Cats Remember Each Other's Names, Japanese Study Suggests

They act like they live on a higher plane of existence than we do. Cats are more present than we think.

Scientists have shown that cats bond with humans. These complex creatures can communicate with us and even track our movements when we are not around.

Even more amazing is that cats can recognize their own names, and now new research shows that this feline feat goes much further than we thought.

In a new study, scientists discovered that cats recognize the names of other cats they are familiar with, and may also know the names of people who live in the same household.

To think that your cat might know your name, but that dogs can be trained to remember the names of hundreds of different things, is a bit strange.

Maybe the strangest part is realizing that these creatures have been listening to us for a long time.

The animal science researcher at Azabu University in Japan told The Asahi Shimbun that what they discovered was astonishing.

I want people to know the truth. Felines don't seem to listen to people's conversations, but they do.

Takagi and other researchers studied cats who lived in multi-cat dwellings or cats who lived in cat caf in Japan.

In the tests, the researchers would present a cat with a picture of a cat from the same house and show it on a computer screen.

While the image was displayed, a recording of the owner's voice would say the name of the model cat.

The team found that cats from domestic households spent more time staring at the computer screen if the model cat was not the same as the one they were looking at.

The cats from the cat didn't show the same delay at the computer during the experiment, maybe because they lived in dwellings with many other cats, and were less familiar with the chosen model cat.

The researchers wrote that only household cats anticipated a specific cat face after hearing the cat's name.

The subjects expected the face of the cat after hearing its name.

The team thinks cats learn these types of name-face relationships by observing third-party interactions at home, and it is possible that cats are surrounded by a stream.

In another experiment, the researchers used humans instead of a model cat. Cats were shown an image of a person they lived with, and at the same time the person's name was spoken, or another name was said in the incongruent condition.

The effect was greater in households with more people living in them, and in households where the cat had lived with the family for longer.

Our interpretation is that cats living with more people have more opportunities to hear names being used than cats living with fewer people, and that living with a family for a longer time increases this experience.

The name-face association may be made more likely by the number of exposure to the stimuli.

It is worth noting that the researchers claim that their study presents the first evidence that domestic cats link human utterances and their social referents through every day experiences, but this is still a rather small study.

The team acknowledges that they don't know much about the mechanisms behind social learning in cats.

While the animals in the study appeared to associate names and faces, we still don't really understand how they develop that association in their living environments.

The authors note the difficulties of studying cats.

One cat completed only the first trial before escaping from the room and climbing out of reach.

Scientific Reports report the findings.