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When a cat had a litter of babies on our farm we took her in since it was a cold winter and otherwise they probably wouldn't have made it. She had six kittens a

When a cat had a litter of babies on our farm we took her in since it was a cold winter and otherwise they probably wouldn't have made it. She had six kittens and we left her alone with them since new mommy cats don't like to be bothered much during early nursing. Fast forward a bit right after the little ones started crawling around more and she was getting up to move around, letting them out of her sight etc. One of the kittens crawled into a basket and we picked it up and walked into another room to see if she would notice the missing kitten. She came back and checked around and determined she only had 5 babies and was missing one. We felt terrible and quickly returned the kitten but it was clear she could count or something very similar to counting.

swebs 8y ago
Or she just recognized each one and came to a conclusion like "John is missing"
- mLuby 8y ago
  This would be easy to test by replacing John with another kitten, right?
- bloak 8y ago
  Yes, it seems very plausible that a cat might recognise individual kittens. I think there are also documented cases of birds noticing if one of their newly hatched young is missing. In this case, because they're newly hatched, one might guess that the parent is not recognising each one. An experiment is called for: swap the young of two parents and see if both parents are happy with the right number. I suspect someone has already tried this, but I can't immediately find any reports.
  - Pulcinella 8y ago
    Yeah I imagine it’s much easier for animals to recognize individuals of their own species than individuals of another. e.g. Humans have specialized brain circuitry for recognizing human faces, but all horse or bird faces basically look the same to us. A bird might easily think all humans look basically the same but obviously each bird is totally different.
    - Sharlin 8y ago
      With cats, like with dogs, recognizing conspecifics is most likely highly dependent on scent, a sensory modality whose richness in those and many other species we humans can hardly imagine.
  - creep 8y ago
    It could be based on scent as well. Swapping young would introduce another set of pheromones from the other mother.
  - KineticLensman 8y ago
    > I think there are also documented cases of birds noticing if one of their newly hatched young is missing. Cuckoo success would seem to suggest that as long as there is something in the nest demonstrating the correct 'feed me' cues, the adults will feed it

swebs 8y ago

Or she just recognized each one and came to a conclusion like "John is missing"

mLuby 8y ago
This would be easy to test by replacing John with another kitten, right?
bloak 8y ago
Yes, it seems very plausible that a cat might recognise individual kittens. I think there are also documented cases of birds noticing if one of their newly hatched young is missing. In this case, because they're newly hatched, one might guess that the parent is not recognising each one. An experiment is called for: swap the young of two parents and see if both parents are happy with the right number. I suspect someone has already tried this, but I can't immediately find any reports.
- Pulcinella 8y ago
  Yeah I imagine it’s much easier for animals to recognize individuals of their own species than individuals of another. e.g. Humans have specialized brain circuitry for recognizing human faces, but all horse or bird faces basically look the same to us. A bird might easily think all humans look basically the same but obviously each bird is totally different.
  - Sharlin 8y ago
    With cats, like with dogs, recognizing conspecifics is most likely highly dependent on scent, a sensory modality whose richness in those and many other species we humans can hardly imagine.
- creep 8y ago
  It could be based on scent as well. Swapping young would introduce another set of pheromones from the other mother.
- KineticLensman 8y ago
  > I think there are also documented cases of birds noticing if one of their newly hatched young is missing. Cuckoo success would seem to suggest that as long as there is something in the nest demonstrating the correct 'feed me' cues, the adults will feed it