Psychologists Sarah Millsopp and Deborah Wells tested 42 housecats — split evenly between males and females — to determine whether, like humans, cats are right-handed or left-handed. They published their results recently in the Animal Behavior journal.

The cats were subjected to three tests. In the first test, researchers dropped tuna into narrow-mouth jar. For the second, they dangled mouse toys above the cats’ heads. In the final test, they dragged a mouse toy across the floor in front of the cats. Each cat was put through each test 100 times.

The results were somewhat astonishing. When playing with the mice, both male and female cats demonstrated ambidextrous use of both paws. But in the tuna-in-the-jar test, all but one of the male cats used their left paws to scoop out the tuna, while all but one female cat used their right paws to complete the same task.

The findings show that cats use their paws much like humans use their hands. For example, most humans are ambidextrous when it comes to simple tasks like opening a door, but use their favored hand for tasks requiring precision, like writing.

The cats in the study mimicked human hand usage in another way: although the vast majority of humans are right-handed, men are statistically much more likely than women to be left-handed. One theory suggests that left-handed people were exposed to higher levels of testosterone than right-handed people while in the womb.

[PHOTO: media.onsugar.com]

If you’ve ever wondered who’s in control, you or your cat, a new study points to the obvious. It’s your cat.

Household cats exercise this control with a certain type of urgent-sounding, high-pitched meow, according to the findings.

This meow is actually a purr mixed with a high-pitched cry. While people usually think of cat purring as a sign of happiness, some cats make this purr-cry sound when they want to be fed. The study showed that humans find these mixed calls annoying and difficult to ignore.

“The embedding of a cry within a call that we normally associate with contentment is quite a subtle means of eliciting a response,” said Karen McComb of the University of Sussex. “Solicitation purring is probably more acceptable to humans than overt meowing, which is likely to get cats ejected from the bedroom.”

They know us

Previous research has shown similarities between cat cries and human infant cries.

McComb suggests that the purr-cry may subtly take advantage of humans’ sensitivity to cries they associate with nurturing offspring. Also, including the cry within the purr could make the sound “less harmonic and thus more difficult to habituate to,” she said.

McComb got the idea for the study from her experience with her own cat, who would consistently wake her up in the mornings with a very insistent purr. After speaking with other cat owners, she learned that some of their cats also made the same type of call. As a scientist who studies vocal communication in mammals, she decided to investigate the manipulative meow.

Tough to test

Setting up the experiments wasn’t easy. While the felines used purr-cries around their familiar owners, they were not eager to make the same cries in front of strangers. So McComb and her team trained cat owners to record their pets’ cries — capturing the sounds made by cats when they were seeking food and when they were not. In all, the team collected recordings from 10 different cats.

The researchers then played the cries back for 50 human participants, not all of whom owned cats. They found that humans, even if they had never had a cat themselves, judged the purrs recorded while cats were actively seeking food — the purrs with an embedded, high-pitched cry — as more urgent and less pleasant than those made in other contexts.

When the team re-synthesised the recorded purrs to remove the embedded cry, leaving all else unchanged, the human subjects’ urgency ratings for those calls decreased significantly.

McComb said she thinks this cry occurs at a low level in cats’ normal purring, “but we think that cats learn to dramatically exaggerate it when it proves effective in generating a response from humans.” In fact, not all cats use this form of purring at all, she said, noting that it seems to most often develop in cats that have a one-on-one relationship with their owners rather than those living in large households, where their purrs might be overlooked.

The results were published in the July 14 issue of the journal Current Biology.

[LINK: LiveScience.com ]

see more Lolcats

A dog lover forwarded this article to me. Purrsonally, I think the cats in the experiment were smart enough not to play along with the scientists’ puerile games.

Cats outsmarted in psychologist’s test
Strings experiment shows limits of feline intelligence

by James Meikle

Cats are not stupid, they’re just different.

It will cause outrage among some cat owners, but research suggests the pets are not as clever as some humans assumed – or at least they think in a way we have yet to fathom.

Psychology lecturer Britta Osthaus says cats do not understand cause-and-effect connections between objects. She tested the thought processes of 15 of them by attaching fish and biscuit treats to one end of a piece of string, placing them under a plastic screen to make them unreachable and then seeing if the cats could work out that pulling on the other end of the string would pull the treat closer.

They were tested in three ways, using a single baited string, two parallel strings where only one was baited, and two crossed strings where only one was baited.

The single string test proved no problem, but unlike dogs (which Osthaus has previously tested) no cat consistently chose correctly between two parallel strings. With two crossed strings, one cat always made the wrong choice and others succeeded no more than might be expected by chance.

Osthaus, of Canterbury Christ Church University, Kent, said: “This finding is somehow surprising as cats regularly use their paws and claws to pull things towards them during play and hunting. They performed even worse than dogs, which can at least solve the parallel string task.”

The study helped show the limits of feline intelligence, said Osthaus, who conducted the research while a teaching fellow at Exeter University. “If we know their limits we won’t expect too much of them, which in turn is important for their welfare. I am not trying to say cats are stupid, just they are different. We are so anthropomorphic we can’t see the world through their eyes.”

There is just one consolation. Humans don’t understand string theory either.

[LINK: Guardian.co.uk]

I am the assistant director of a market research company in La Jolla/UTC – Plaza Research. We are putting together a paid discussion group on the topic of Pet Care. We are specifically looking for owners of dogs and/or cats who have stomach, gastrointestinal, and or digestion problems.

The discussion is 2 hours and is being held on December 3rd or December 4th. We are researching peoples experiences and opinions with regard to caring for their pet’s problems and will offer them $100 for their participation.

If you own a dog or cat with such problems, or know anyone who may be interested please spread the word! I can send a flier for you to post or email to friends and family.

If you’re interested, call my office at 858.200.3000 and mention the Pet Care study.

Thank you so much!

Lauren Houle
Assistant Director
Plaza Research – San Diego
9339 Genesee Ave, Suite 100
San Diego, CA 92121
(858) 200-3000
Lauren Houle
lhoule@plazaresearch.com