Fumi Higaki taught her cat Ebisu to imitate her actions. It wasn't just a set of actions that the cat learned, it was the act of copying whatever Higaki did. A team of scientists tested the cat with new, novel actions and found that she really was mapping out Higaki's actions and imitating them, in a study published in the journal Animal Cognition. Gizmodo has more.
All told, through 18 trials, Ebisu seemingly proved capable of imitating Higaki’s behaviors 81% of the time. These behaviors included spinning around, touching the same toy, opening a small drawer, and laying down horizontally. What made the mimicry even more interesting was that Ebisu seemed capable of seeing her owner’s not very cat-like motions and figuring out how she would do the same thing as a cat, such as when Higaki raised her arms up high and Ebisu then stood up on her hind legs and lifted both her paws up.
-via Nag on the Lake
Comments (0)