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   https://science.sciencemag.org/content/364/6440/522   
      
   From Science Magazine:   
   ===   
   Ready to pounce   
   by    David Grimm   
      
   Science  10 May 2019:   
   Vol. 364, Issue 6440, pp. 522-525   
   DOI: 10.1126/science.364.6440.522   
      
   After years of favoring dogs, researchers are finally probing the secrets of   
   the feline mind.   
      
   Strange and noisy objects like a fan with streamers often frighten cats. But   
   they can calm down by picking up on humans' emotional cues, as Kitty does with   
   a smiling Kristyn Vitale.   
   "PHOTO: HOLLY ANDRES"   
      
   Carl the cat was born to beat the odds. Abandoned on the side of the road in a   
   Rubbermaid container, the scrawny black kitten--with white paws, white chest,   
   and a white, skunklike stripe down his nose--was rescued by Kristyn Vitale, a   
   postdoc at Oregon State University here who just happens to study the feline   
   mind. Now, Vitale hopes Carl will pull off another coup, by performing a feat   
   of social smarts researchers once thought was impossible.   
      
   In a stark white laboratory room, Vitale sits against the back wall, flanked   
   by two overturned cardboard bowls. An undergraduate research assistant kneels   
   a couple of meters away, holding Carl firmly.   
      
   "Carl!" Vitale calls, and then points to one of the bowls. The assistant lets   
   go.   
      
   Toddlers pass this test easily. They know that when we point at something,   
   we're telling them to look at it--an insight into the intentions of others   
   that will become essential as children learn to interact with people around   
   them. Most other animals, including our closest living relative, chimpanzees,   
   fail the experiment. But about 20 years ago, researchers discovered something   
   surprising: Dogs pass the test with flying colors. The finding shook the   
   scientific community and led to an explosion of studies into the canine mind.   
      
   Cats like Carl were supposed to be a contrast. Like dogs, cats have lived with   
   us in close quarters for thousands of years. But unlike our canine pals, cats   
   descend from antisocial ancestors, and humans have spent far less time   
   aggressively molding them into companions. So researchers thought cats   
   couldn't possibly share our brain waves the way dogs do.   
      
   Yet, as cats are apt to do, Carl defies the best-laid plans of Homo sapiens.   
   He trots right over to the bowl Vitale is pointing at, passing the test as   
   easily as his canine rivals. "Good boy!" Vitale coos.   
      
   Carl isn't alone. After years when scientists largely ignored social   
   intelligence in cats, labs studying feline social cognition have popped up   
   around the globe, and a small but growing number of studies is showing that   
   cats match dogs in many tests of social smarts. The work could transform the   
   widespread image of cats as aloof or untamed. It also may eventually offer   
   insight into how domestication transformed wild animals into our best friends,   
   and even hint at how the human mind itself changed over the course of   
   evolution.   
      
   That is, if the cats themselves deign to participate.   
      
   CARL'S CANINE PREDECESSOR was a black Labrador retriever named Oreo. In the   
   spring of 1996, Brian Hare, then an undergrad at Emory University in Atlanta,   
   was studying how toddlers pass the pointing test. "I turned to my adviser,"   
   says Hare, now an evolutionary anthropologist at Duke University in Durham,   
   North Carolina, "and said, 'I think my dog can do that.'"   
      
   In 1998, Hare and ádám Miklósi, a cognitive ethologist at Eötvös Loránd   
   University in Budapest, independently published studies showing dogs could   
   understand human pointing. Until then, social cognition researchers had paid   
   little attention to dogs, thinking their minds had been "corrupted" by   
   thousands of years of domestication.   
      
   Hare's and Miklósi's finding sparked a canine cognition revolution (Science,   
   28 August 2009, p. 1062), helping confirm that domesticated animals such as   
   dogs were worthy of study. More than a dozen labs around the world have since   
   churned out hundreds of papers on the canine mind. Researchers have learned   
   that dogs can recognize emotion in people's faces, understand components of   
   human speech, and may even have a sense of fairness and ethics. Those   
   abilities probably helped turn canines into loyal, trusted companions and   
   enabled them to perform socially complex tasks, as varied as guiding the blind   
   and serving with military units.   
      
   Few species understand what human pointing means, but Lyla aces the test.   
   ["PHOTO: HOLLY ANDRES"]   
      
   As dogs nuzzled their way up the cognitive tree, however, cats were left   
   clawing at the roots.   
   ===   
      
   Read more at the link above.   
      
   Take care,   
   Janis   
      
   --- BBBS/Li6 v4.10 Toy-4   
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