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Many regard felines as indifferent to their human companions, but cat owners may beg to differ—and now they research to back them up. A study published yesterday (April 4) in Scientific Reports suggests that domestic cats can distinguish the sounds of their names, even if they don’t come when called.
“I think many cat owners feel that cats know their names, or the word ‘food,’ but until now, there was no scientific evidence to back that up,” Atsuko Saito, a psychologist at Sophia University in Tokyo and one of the study’s authors, tells Science News.
The project examined the responses of cats from Japanese homes when they heard a series of words spoken by their owners or a researcher. The humans uttered four nouns that were similar in cadence and length to the cat’s name and then the actual name. Most cats reacted to the ...
