Domestic cats (Fells catus) discriminate their names from other words
Domestic cats (Fells catus) discriminate their names from other words
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DOI：
10.1038/s41598-019-40616-4
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发表时间：
2019-04-04
影响因子：
4.6
通讯作者：
Hasegawa, Toshikazu
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Saito, Atsuko;Shinozuka, Kazutaka;Hasegawa, Toshikazu
与人类互动的两种最常见的非人类动物是家犬（Canis familis）和猫（Fells catus）。与狗相比，家猫与人类交流的能力尚未得到彻底探索。我们使用习惯化-去习惯化方法来研究家猫是否能够区分人类的话语，这些话语包括猫自己的名字、一般名词和其他同居猫的名字。来自普通家庭和猫咖啡馆的猫参与了实验。在普通家庭的猫中，习惯于连续出现四个不同的一般名词或四个同居猫的名字的猫，对随后出现自己的名字的反应表现出显着的反弹；即使当不熟悉的人说出自己的名字时，这些猫也会将自己的名字与一般名词区分开来。这些结果表明猫能够区分自己的名字和其他单词。猫咖啡馆的猫和家养猫在区分自己的名字和一般名词方面没有差异，但咖啡馆的猫并没有区分自己的名字和其他同居猫的名字。我们得出的结论是，猫可以根据音素差异来区分人类话语的内容。
Two of the most common nonhuman animals that interact with humans are domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) and cats (Fells catus). In contrast to dogs, the ability of domestic cats to communicate with humans has not been explored thoroughly. We used a habituation-dishabituation method to investigate whether domestic cats could discriminate human utterances, which consisted of cats' own names, general nouns, and other cohabiting cats' names. Cats from ordinary households and from a cat cafe' participated in the experiments. Among cats from ordinary households, cats habituated to the serial presentation of four different general nouns or four names of cohabiting cats showed a significant rebound in response to the subsequent presentation of their own names; these cats discriminated their own names from general nouns even when unfamiliar persons uttered them. These results indicate that cats are able to discriminate their own names from other words. There was no difference in discrimination of their own names from general nouns between cats from the cat cafe and household cats, but cafe cats did not discriminate their own names from other cohabiting cats' names. We conclude that cats can discriminate the content of human utterances based on phonemic differences.