Abstract
A wide range of non-human animal species have been shown to be able to respond to human referential signals, such as pointing gestures. The aim of the present study was to replicate previous findings showing cats to be sensitive to human pointing cues (Miklósi et al. 2005). In our study, we presented two types of human pointing gestures - momentary direct pointing and momentary ipsilateral (cross-body) pointing. We tested nine rescue cats in a two-way object choice task. On a group level, the success rate of cats was 74.4 percentage. Cats performed significantly above chance level in both the direct pointing and ipsilateral pointing condition. Trial number, rewarded side and type of gesture did not significantly affect the cats’ performance in the experiment. On an individual level, 5 out of 7 cats who completed 20 trials, performed significantly above chance level. Two cats only completed 10 trials. One of them succeeded in 8, the other in 6 of these. The results of our study replicate previous findings of cats being responsive to human direct pointing cues and add additional knowledge about their ability to follow ipsilateral pointing cues. Our results highlight a domestic species, socialised in a group setting, to possess heterospecific communication skills, however we have to consider parsimonious explanations, such as local and stimulus enhancement.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
Footnotes
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