Posted on 10/08/2020 7:21:19 AM PDT by Red Badger
Cats have a reputation for standoffishness, especially compared with dogs, but if you find your feline friend a little hard to bond with, maybe you're just not speaking their language. Never fear - new research has shown that it's not so difficult. You just need to smile at them more.
Not the human way, by baring your teeth, but the cat way, by narrowing your eyes, and blinking slowly. By observing cat-human interactions, scientists were able to confirm that this expression makes cats - both familiar and strange - approach and be receptive to humans.
"As someone who has both studied animal behaviour and is a cat owner, it's great to be able to show that cats and humans can communicate in this way," said psychologist Karen McComb of the University of Sussex in the UK.
"It's something that many cat owners had already suspected, so it's exciting to have found evidence for it."
If you've spent any time around cats, you've probably seen their 'partially closed eyes' facial expression, accompanied by slow blinking. It's similar to how human eyes narrow when smiling, and usually occurs when puss is relaxed and content. The expression is interpreted as a kind of cat smile.
Anecdotal evidence from cat owners has hinted that humans can copy this expression to communicate to cats that we are friendly and open to interaction. So, a team of psychologists designed two experiments to determine whether cats behaved differently towards slow-blinking humans.
In the first experiment, owners slow-blinked at 21 cats from 14 different households. Once the cat was settled and comfy in one spot in their home environment, the owners were instructed to sit about a metre away and slow-blink when the cat was looking at them. Cameras recorded both the owner's face and the cat's face, and the results were compared to how cats blink with no human interaction.
The results showed that cats are more likely to slow-blink at their humans after their humans have slow-blinked at them, compared to the no-interaction condition.
The second experiment included 24 cats from eight different households. This time, it wasn't the owners doing the blinking but the researchers, who'd had no prior contact with the cat. For a control, the cats were recorded responding to a no-blink condition, in which humans stared at the cats without blinking their eyes.
The researchers performed the same slow-blink process as the first experiment, adding an extended hand towards the cat. And they found that not only were the cats more likely to blink back, but that they were more likely to approach the human's hand after the human had blinked.
"This study is the first to experimentally investigate the role of slow blinking in cat-human communication," McComb said.
"And it is something you can try yourself with your own cat at home, or with cats you meet in the street. It's a great way of enhancing the bond you have with cats. Try narrowing your eyes at them as you would in a relaxed smile, followed by closing your eyes for a couple of seconds. You'll find they respond in the same way themselves and you can start a sort of conversation."
Dogs may be a lot more enthusiastically demonstrative than cats, but for cat lovers, this news won't come as a surprise. Research in recent years has shown that our feline friends are a lot more in tune with their human housemates than previously supposed, and that comparing them to dogs is a disservice.
Cats, for example, respond in kind to humans who are receptive to them - so if you find cats standoffish, that might be a problem with you, not the kitty. Likewise, cats echo the personality traits of the humans they live with - this may be related to why cats seem to pick up when their humans are sad. They also can recognise their names (although they choose to ignore them a lot of the time). And their bonds with their humans are surprisingly deep.
It's difficult to know why cats slow-blink at humans this way. It's been interpreted as a means of signalling benign intentions, since cats are thought to interpret unbroken staring as threatening. But it's also possible that cats developed the expression since humans respond positively to it. With domesticated animals, it's often impossible to tell.
Either way, it does seem to help forge a rapport. And that's a good thing to know. Learning how to improve our relationships with these enigmatic animals could also be a way to improve their emotional health - not just in the home environment, but across a range of potentially stressful situations.
"Understanding positive ways in which cats and humans interact can enhance public understanding of cats, improve feline welfare, and tell us more about the socio-cognitive abilities of this under-studied species," said psychologist Tasmin Humphrey of the University of Sussex.
"Our findings could potentially be used to assess the welfare of cats in a variety of settings, including veterinary practices and shelters."
You're going to go try it right now, aren't you?
The research has been published in Scientific Reports.
Who knew one could get paid to watch cats blink? How much did this research cost?
We have two cats. Eustace, our male cat, does the slow blink CONSTANTLY. He is doted on of course, so he gets the message without us having to mimic him. I always called that movement his “closey eyes”, and it never fails to charm.
Or cat kisses as we call them. I remember the day I gave my first cat (the great Dr. Frank) a cat kiss. She was about four months old (so a tiny little kitten) and I’d just read some book on owning your first cat. She looked at me with great shock, as if she was thinking, “This weird non-cat speaks cat! I LOVE HER!”
For the next fiften years that cat taught me all about unconditional love. I still miss that little lady.
I want that job!
Nice work, if you can get it!..................
And with cats, we use the term "domesticated" very loosely.
Yes, you had a very good friend and that little lady. I have a similar story, Innoway, that I love to tell anytime I get the chance. Quite a few years ago I was suffering from severe anxiety that was reminding me from sleeping. We had just a short time before this incident got a cat from the shelter. My wife chose this cat, mostly because it was a fiery little pissant that wanted to tear everything to shreds. Yeah, I said that. Well, one day,I was laying down to try and go to bed and I couldn’t sleep. This cat climbed up on my bed, climbed on top of my head Dash and proceeded to purr his little heart out. He was extremely large long-haired male Persian, my daughters named him Lacey… Well, I picked him up put him down the floor was exasperated sigh and said quit doing that. He immediately got back up on the bed, climbed on top of my head and proceeded to repeat. I never slept better nor had a better feline friend in my life.
It would be difficult for my cat you see a slow blink from me because, if she’s around, she’s usually sitting on my chest, gently head-butting and rubbing her face against my face, licking my nose or reaching up to pat me on the face...being very careful with her claws.
I’ll keep her though...
She’s saying: FEED ME!....................
As a lifelong cat guy, I am well acquainted with the slow blink and the sympathetic yawn.
Anyone who’s ever hosted cats know about the slow blink and how to return the gesture.
This reminds me of a cat article here at FR a few years ago. Somebody published a study saying, basically, that cats didn’t enjoy being petted and stroked...that it made them nervous. Many commenters laughed and pointed our that if the cat didn’t like it...zoom...they’d be gone.
That is a wonderful story, and cats know (dogs, too, but cats are a little more subtle about it.) When my Mom died, that same little cat, my Frankie Girl, refused to leave my side. She would snuggle very close, and head butt me.
One roommate once saw me sleeping on the couch, and Frank was, literally, standing guard over me. She looked like a statue of the Egyptian deity, Bast. All black, almost glowing acid-yellow eyes, and had a purr like a cement mixer. She liked everyone, but I was her momma. I miss that little monkey-girl.
Totally! And then there was the cat I owned who would walk back and forth under my hand, and who would vocally complain if I stopped patting her.
Exactly. Our cat will pull at your OTHER hand, if you are only petting him with ONE hand.
I do try to communicate with the slow blinks language, but he also seems to really like just having me talk to him. He stays closer and has more interaction, the more I talk to him in calm voice tones.
It also works with raccoons, opposums, skunks, fishers, cows n horses n chipmunks. All they had to do was ask a farmer duhhhh waste of money. Morons.
Accompanied by head nods.
From a book I have called the sacred cat, a slow blink is i am opening my soul to you. When we slow blink back, they see us opening to them. Its a trust thing. When i fed strrays aat my door, i did this. They sat, curled their tale, and blinked back. I even got a few ‘rrrrp!’ from them.
I’m just guessing that two organizations with the most to gain from understanding cat behaviors would be large corporations that manufacture cat nutrition or cat medications, and large universities with veterinary schools. They would have both the money and a use for such knowlege. Universities would likely use their graduate students for the research. And corporations would likely contract with the universities to do various studies.
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