The difference between cats and dogs
Why cats won’t punish a stranger who harms you
There’s an old stereotype about the difference between
cats and dogs. Dogs are loving and fiercely loyal, they say,
while cats are aloof and indifferent. Most cat people probably
disagree. I certainly find it hard to believe, with my cat purring
away in my lap, that she doesn’t care about me.
Overall, cat cognition research suggests cats do form
emotional bonds with their humans. Cats seem to
experience separation anxiety, are more responsive to
their owners’ voices than to strangers’ and look for
reassurance from their owners in scary situations.
But a new study, by researchers in Japan, complicates
the picture of our relationship with cats. Adapting a
method previously used to study dogs, the researchers found cats
unlike dogs don’t avoid strangers who refuse to help their owners.
In the experiment, a cat watched as her owner tried to
open a box to get at something inside. Two strangers
sat on either side of the owner and the owner turned
to one of them and asked for help. In “helper” trials,
the stranger helped the owner to open the box.
In “non-helper” trials, the stranger refused.
The other stranger sat passively, doing nothing.
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Then, both strangers offered the cat a treat, and the
scientists watched to see which the cat approached first.
Did she prefer to take food from a helper over a passive
bystander? This would indicate a positivity bias,
showing the helpful interaction made the cat feel more
warmly towards the stranger. Or did she avoid taking
food from the non-helper? This negativity bias might
mean the cat felt distrustful.
When this method was used to test dogs, they showed
a clear negativity bias. The dogs preferred not to take
food from a stranger who refused help to their owner.
In contrast, the cats in the new study were completely
indifferent. They showed no preference for the helpful
person and no avoidance of the unhelpful person.
Apparently, as far as cats are concerned, food is food.
Social cues
What should we take from this? A tempting conclusion
would be that cats are selfish and couldn’t care less
how their humans are treated. Although this might
fit with our preconceptions about cats, it’s an example
of anthropomorphic bias. It involves interpreting cats’
behavior as though they were furry little humans,
rather than creatures with their own distinctive ways of thinking.
To really understand cats, we have to get out of this human
centered mindset and think of them as cats. When we do,
what seems most likely isn’t that the cats in this study
were selfish, but they weren’t able to pick up on the
social interactions between the humans. They weren’t
aware that some of the strangers were being unhelpful.
Cats were domesticated more recently, and have been
changed by domestication far less than dogs
Although cats are able to pick up on some human social
cues they can follow human pointing and are sensitive to
human emotions they’re probably less tuned in to our
social relationships than dogs are.
Cats were domesticated more recently, and have been
changed by domestication far less than dogs. While
dogs are descended from social pack animals, cats’
ancestors were largely solitary hunters. Domestication
has probably heightened dogs’ existing social skills,
but it may not have done the same for cats, who were
less socially aware to begin with. So we shouldn’t be
too quick to conclude that our cats don’t care if people
are mean to us. What’s more likely is that they just can’t tell.
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Cats, it appears, aren’t that choosy about who they will
accept a treat off (Credit: Danielle Donders/Getty Images)
Despite their popularity, we still know relatively little about
how cats think. Future research might show cats’ understanding
of humans is even more limited than we currently realize.
Alternatively, it might turn out that cats are better able to
recognize human social dynamics in different contexts.
But whatever studies reveal, we should avoid letting
preconceptions or anthropomorphism drive our interpretation
of cats’ behavior. Before we judge our feline friends to be
indifferent or selfish, we should first try to look at the
world through their eyes.
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