The Snapchat cat filter shows how little we know about cat cognition
0Reported today on The Verge
For the full article visit: https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/14/21020648/snapchat-cat-filter-video-recognition-cognition-mirror-test
Reported today in The Verge.
The Snapchat cat filter shows how little we know about cat cognition
Apologies to Taylor Swift and Andrew Lloyd Webber, but the most interesting cat content online right now is a Snapchat filter that lets humans try on a feline face. The resulting clips are adorable, confounding, and a great example of just how little we know about cat cognition.
this video of cats reacting to cat face filter has me crying. pic.twitter.com/pNDmF8JQ8t
In a video compilation making the rounds online, cats look at a phone screen that shows their owners with a cat face filter. The cats whip their heads around to look up at the human, and then back to the screen. "It appears the cat recognizes that their owner's face should be on the phone, but it is not," Kristyn Vitale, who studies cat behavior at Oregon State University, said in an email to The Verge.
However, it's particularly challenging to figure out what this behavior says about cats because we know so little about cat cognition to begin with, says Sarah-Elizabeth Byosiere, an animal behavior researcher and director of the Thinking Dog Center at CUNY Hunter College. "In cats, it's as elusive as cats' general personalities can be," she says. That's partly because they often don't cooperate well in research studies, making data hard to come by. When a researcher tried to test if cats understood what it meant if someone pointed at where food was hidden, for example, multiple subjects wandered off from the testing site.
The video hints at some interesting questions about cat cognitive awareness. It might be a sign the cat recognizes its owner, Vitale said. But it isn't a sign that cats pass the mirror test, despite what some people responding to the video seemed to think.
The mirror test is a key measure