Cats Take ’If I Fits I Sits’ Seriously, Even If The Space Is Just An Illusion
▻https://text.npr.org/994262792
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“This study aligns with previous research which indicates that, like humans, cats are susceptible to a variety of visual illusions,” adds Vitale. Past work, for example, has shown that cats will engage in hunting behavior when they see illusory motion such as the rotating snakes illusion.
There’s even one study, conducted in a lab in 1988, that looked at two cats’ reactions to the exact same contour illusion used in Smith’s new experiment. Randolph Blake, a cognitive neuroscientist now with Vanderbilt University, performed that earlier work. It involved two lab cats trained to touch a button with their noses when they saw a square shape on a screen, in order to get a food reward.
The cats performed the task numerous times in a highly controlled setup, allowing the scientific rigor needed to provide evidence that the cats subjectively perceived the illusory square, says Blake.
This latest study, in contrast, has the advantage of testing untrained cats in a more natural setting, although it generated less data because so many participants dropped out. And Blake notes that because cats are so short and close to the ground, they might have seen the shapes on the floor from an angle that made the cats less likely to perceive the illusion of the square in the same way that much taller people do.
Still, he says, the researchers were aware of the limitations of what they found, and he says this study cleverly exploited pet cats’ natural desire to occupy an enclosed space.