10 ms·

Why do cats love boxes so much?

138 points by helsinkiandrew 3y ago

j-pb 3y ago
The real gem is the scientific article hidden in the pubsci article: Gabriella E. Smith, Philippe A. Chouinard, Sarah-Elizabeth Byosiere, If I fits I sits: A citizen science investigation into illusory contour susceptibility in domestic cats (Felis silvestris catus), Applied Animal Behaviour Science, Volume 240, 2021, 105338, ISSN 0168-1591, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2021.105338 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2021.105338. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168159121001258 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016815912...) Abstract: A well-known phenomenon to cat owners is the tendency of their cats to sit in enclosed spaces such as boxes, laundry baskets, and even shape outlines taped on the floor. This investigative study asks whether domestic cats (Felis silvestris catus) are also susceptible to sitting in enclosures that are illusory in nature, utilizing cats’ attraction to box-like spaces to assess their perception of the Kanizsa square visual illusion. Carried out during the COVID-19 pandemic, this study randomly assigned citizen science participants Booklets of six randomized, counterbalanced daily stimuli to print out, prepare, and place on the floor in pairs. Owners observed and videorecorded their cats’ behavior with the stimuli and reported findings from home over the course of the six daily trials. This study ultimately reached over 500 pet cats and cat owners, and of those, 30 completed all of the study’s trials. Of these, nine cat subjects selected at least one stimulus by sitting within the contours (illusory or otherwise) with all limbs for at least three seconds. This study revealed that cats selected the Kanizsa illusion just as often as the square and more often than the control, indicating that domestic cats may treat the subjective Kanizsa contours as they do real contours. Given the drawbacks of citizen science projects such as participant attrition, future research would benefit from replicating this study in controlled settings. To the best of our knowledge, this investigation is the first of its kind in three regards: a citizen science study of cat cognition; a formal examination into cats’ attraction to 2D rather than 3D enclosures; and study into cats’ susceptibility to illusory contours in an ecologically relevant paradigm. This study demonstrates the potential of more ecologically valid study of pet cats, and more broadly provides an interesting new perspective into cat visual perception research. Keywords: Cat; Behavior; Vision; Cognition; Kanizsa illusion
- politelemon 3y ago
  Thanks for highlighting that, the 30 out of 500 completion rate is hilarious and as cat owners would say, completely expected.
  - lucideer 3y ago
    The completion rate sounded more a reflection on cat owners (well on citizen science in general) than on cats.
  - Someone1234 3y ago
    It is 9 in 30: > 30 completed all of the study’s trials. Of these, nine cat 500 was the number that started the trial, 30 is the number who completed and were therefore used.
- glandium 3y ago
  There was also an Ig Nobel for "Why are cats liquid?" https://www.stemfellowship.org/the-ig-nobel-prize-why-are-cats-liquid/ https://www.stemfellowship.org/the-ig-nobel-prize-why-are-ca...
  - jwestbury 3y ago
    There's also this brilliant (and wholly wrong) presentation on why cats sprint out of the room for no reason: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvOtUh8Avi8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvOtUh8Avi8
  - rob74 3y ago
    ...which is closely related to the box phenomenon: I have a cat that currently spends the night in an IKEA basket (https://www.ikea.com/at/en/p/risatorp-basket-white-90281618/ https://www.ikea.com/at/en/p/risatorp-basket-white-90281618/) that was actually meant for socks. At the beginning, some parts tend to stick out, but after a few hours, the "cat liquid" has filled the available space and forms an almost horizontal surface, similar to this image in the article https://assets.rbl.ms/845008/980x.jpg https://assets.rbl.ms/845008/980x.jpg .
quietpain 3y ago
A Dutch biologist by the name of Midas Dekkers wrote a book about this phenomenon. It’s titled “The thigmophile” Haven’t read it yet, but thigmophillic behaviour is the opposite of claustrophobic. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midas_Dekkers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midas_Dekkers
mojo74 3y ago
A favourite with the kids My Cat Like to Hide in Boxes https://www.amazon.co.uk/Likes-Hide-Boxes-Picture-Puffin/dp/0140502424 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Likes-Hide-Boxes-Picture-Puffin/dp/...
bell-cot 3y ago
Critical, but not mentioned: How can we make keyboards (especially the ones on my home office computers) less attractive to cats? Perhaps keyboard-"print" cat nap mats, with USB-powered heaters, could serve as decoys? Would it help if those decoy mats were stiff-bottomed (to sit in my own lap), or made occasional clicking sounds? Might smaller cats prefer the "laptop" or "84-key" size, and larger cats a "104-key" model?
- TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
  This is a very common problem. There may be a simple solution. Cats have very sensitive noses and hate certain smells. Some smelly things are toxic - lavender, eucalyptus - but rosemary, thyme, and banana are cat-safe. I'd guess a few dabs of essential oil on your MBP would discourage those inconvenient cat snuggle attacks.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    I think it is more about attention, you are focused on this noise making device and staring at that bright surface thingy while I want to be cuddled. Obviously, for a cat, that is completely unacceptable! What did work so in my case, is working on a laptop at the dinning table, because the cat knows the table is a no-go zone, at least when the humans are there. Well, it works most of the time, sometime curiosity is too strong.
- dsr_ 3y ago
  Two things, one positive and one negative. Positive: put a specific cat trap on your desk or nearby. The lid of a box of printer paper, or anything similarly sized; a folded towel. Negative: put a hard dust cover on your keyboard when you aren't using it. Now it's an uninteresting hard surface.
  - jstarfish 3y ago
    > Now it's an uninteresting hard surface. ...that they will then sit on, because it still fits the shape of "box." Everyone is missing the point that the keyboard itself is rectangular/box-shaped. It delineates the boundaries of a territory they can occupy and claim for themselves. Get one of those ergonomic "wave" keyboards that aren't perfectly flat and I doubt they would sit on them. They like laptop keyboards even more. Not only are they boxy, they're heated.
AltruisticGapHN 3y ago
> hunkering down in small, enclosed spaces is a kind of “swaddling” behavior left over from cuddling up with their moms and littermates when they were kittens. This isn't cat specific. The concept of boundaries is very important in healing trauma, and just in general is a key concept in human being's emotional development. > This is peculiar. How safe and cozy can a cat feel sitting right out in the open on top of the water bill? Dodman describes it as something like the placebo effect. “This virtual box may provide some misplaced sense of security and psychosomatic comfort,” he writes. It is also an exercise I found in a book for healing trauma : make a circle on the floor with some towels, or a rope, or other objects and sit in it. It actually works and can help calm down the nervous system. It is a "patch" you could say, a substitute for weaker boundaries. When you sit in the circle, you can feel your body and emotions more easily. Understand this isn't "scientifically proven", but certainly experientially verified at least for me. Just wanted to highlight that the concept of sitting in a physical boundary, even if it's just a square drawn on the floor , does help with the nervous system and it's not cat specific - just something most people don't know about. I would have never thought this exercise would work, it seems silly and yet in my experience it has reliably, consistently, provided relief when my anxiety was really high. Someone with no significant trauma and relatively good boundaries (physical, emotional) may not notice any difference.
- jstarfish 3y ago
  You raise a few good points. > How safe and cozy can a cat feel sitting right out in the open on top of the water bill? Dodman describes it as something like the placebo effect. “This virtual box may provide some misplaced sense of security and psychosomatic comfort,” he writes. Maybe I was a cat in a past life (or on the autism spectrum in this one), but I get it. Urban environments make me very uncomfortable. It's even worse when I commute to them by train or taxi. Once I'm there, it's very overstimulating, and there is no space within them that I can call my own. I can't take a nap anywhere, I can't sit anywhere unbothered, there's just no place I can retreat to and say "this is my personal space; leave me alone or die." The problem is mitigated when I drive into the city, since my car serves that purpose. It's my space, others respect that, and the law would generally support my reaction to anyone that violates it. Meanwhile I'm just expected to deal with it when someone reclaims "my" seat at the library. I have a pet theory (no pun intended) that the homeless suffer the same plight, which compounds existing mental illness. There's zero stability for them. Noplace is theirs. Set up a camp somewhere and get chased away, find someone else looting it, or the city destroying it. Shelters and even jail are temporary-- never theirs. I have a bunch of cats and see them do what I think I do. Sometimes, one gets pushed around a bit too much. They'll fuck off and camp out on some paperwork, inside a stray Amazon box or on top of the fridge (which doubles as a vantage point). Each delineates what is very clearly a personal space for them. Usually they don't get bothered again, but if they do, they do a total 180, become the aggressor and fuck the intruder up-- effectively fighting from a defensive position...which is exactly the comfort I get from having a car in the city (which I know creates problems for everyone; I avoid cities as much as possible). > It is also an exercise I found in a book for healing trauma : make a circle on the floor with some towels, or a rope, or other objects and sit in it. It actually works and can help calm down the nervous system. It is a "patch" you could say, a substitute for weaker boundaries. When you sit in the circle, you can feel your body and emotions more easily. The "personal space" theory definitely isn't for everyone-- my wife can't relate to any of it and yet sensory deprivation is what works for her. When she's overwhelmed, muting one or more senses (blindfold, noise-cancelling headphones, etc.) is what brings her back down. Maybe it's a male/female thing-- rather than reshaping her environment like I do, she reshapes her own perception of it. > Someone with no significant trauma and relatively good boundaries (physical, emotional) may not notice any difference. Definitely!
endeavour 3y ago
A house is just a big box really. Why do humans love boxes so much?
- spidersenses 3y ago
  Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes made of ticky-tacky...
  - hinkley 3y ago
    Little boxes on a hillside and they all look just the same.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
fatih-erikli 3y ago
They feel what we feel when we get in cars.
- smeej 3y ago
  I derive no enjoyment from getting in cars, and certainly wouldn't prefer being in a car to being outside. I don't think I follow your point.
  - fatih-erikli 3y ago
    I don't think cats enjoy being in a box too. They do it to regulate their body temperature in cold weathers
    - smeej 3y ago
      The article says otherwise.
cmiller1 3y ago
When I was small enough to fit inside of them I absolutely loved playing in cardboard boxes too!
caseysoftware 3y ago
When my kids noticed our cat sitting in the box looking around, I called it his "tank." So they promptly drew tank treads on the side and colored it green and built a paper turret. Now he looks rather regal sitting in his tank. So yes, my kids gave heavy weapons to the animal definitely plotting an overthrow of the humans. I'm sorry.
- bombcar 3y ago
  Search for “cat tank” and you can mobilize like it’s 1939.
eastern 3y ago
It's not just cats but their larger relatives too. Just do an image search for 'Lions in boxes', 'Tigers in boxes' and so on.
- hinkley 3y ago
  Big cats obliterate boxes. I’ve seen one in a wheelbarrow before, but I think it was just a leopard.
killjoywashere 3y ago
Tell me you don't find it relaxing to sit in the closet.
glonq 3y ago
Yes, but do 8 out of 10 cats enjoy a carrot in a box? #RipSean
kobalsky 3y ago
something that is not mentioned in the article of commented here is that at least with my cats they used to go into ambush mode when they got into boxes. my feeling was that since they are always hunting, they like anything that doubles as resting and hiding place to ambush anything that goes by.
euroderf 3y ago
I should think it's pretty obvious why cats like boxes. Cats evolved into a niche where they are both predator and prey. So consider the benefits of a lair-with-a-view. For the role of predator, they have a view plus concealment. Ambush! For the role of prey, they have both concealment and protection. I think the only real question is, what's with cats sitting in rectangles painted on the floor ? Is it just the usual cat thing of going to wherever humans' attention is going ? Or does a rectangle activate some pattern recognition circuit ? If so, does it still work if the cat has grown up in an environment without objects with right angles, such as / including boxes ?

j-pb 3y ago

The real gem is the scientific article hidden in the pubsci article: Gabriella E. Smith, Philippe A. Chouinard, Sarah-Elizabeth Byosiere, If I fits I sits: A citizen science investigation into illusory contour susceptibility in domestic cats (Felis silvestris catus), Applied Animal Behaviour Science, Volume 240, 2021, 105338, ISSN 0168-1591, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2021.105338 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2021.105338. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168159121001258 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016815912...) Abstract: A well-known phenomenon to cat owners is the tendency of their cats to sit in enclosed spaces such as boxes, laundry baskets, and even shape outlines taped on the floor. This investigative study asks whether domestic cats (Felis silvestris catus) are also susceptible to sitting in enclosures that are illusory in nature, utilizing cats’ attraction to box-like spaces to assess their perception of the Kanizsa square visual illusion. Carried out during the COVID-19 pandemic, this study randomly assigned citizen science participants Booklets of six randomized, counterbalanced daily stimuli to print out, prepare, and place on the floor in pairs. Owners observed and videorecorded their cats’ behavior with the stimuli and reported findings from home over the course of the six daily trials. This study ultimately reached over 500 pet cats and cat owners, and of those, 30 completed all of the study’s trials. Of these, nine cat subjects selected at least one stimulus by sitting within the contours (illusory or otherwise) with all limbs for at least three seconds. This study revealed that cats selected the Kanizsa illusion just as often as the square and more often than the control, indicating that domestic cats may treat the subjective Kanizsa contours as they do real contours. Given the drawbacks of citizen science projects such as participant attrition, future research would benefit from replicating this study in controlled settings. To the best of our knowledge, this investigation is the first of its kind in three regards: a citizen science study of cat cognition; a formal examination into cats’ attraction to 2D rather than 3D enclosures; and study into cats’ susceptibility to illusory contours in an ecologically relevant paradigm. This study demonstrates the potential of more ecologically valid study of pet cats, and more broadly provides an interesting new perspective into cat visual perception research. Keywords: Cat; Behavior; Vision; Cognition; Kanizsa illusion

politelemon 3y ago
Thanks for highlighting that, the 30 out of 500 completion rate is hilarious and as cat owners would say, completely expected.
- lucideer 3y ago
  The completion rate sounded more a reflection on cat owners (well on citizen science in general) than on cats.
- Someone1234 3y ago
  It is 9 in 30: > 30 completed all of the study’s trials. Of these, nine cat 500 was the number that started the trial, 30 is the number who completed and were therefore used.
glandium 3y ago
There was also an Ig Nobel for "Why are cats liquid?" https://www.stemfellowship.org/the-ig-nobel-prize-why-are-cats-liquid/ https://www.stemfellowship.org/the-ig-nobel-prize-why-are-ca...
- jwestbury 3y ago
  There's also this brilliant (and wholly wrong) presentation on why cats sprint out of the room for no reason: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvOtUh8Avi8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvOtUh8Avi8
- rob74 3y ago
  ...which is closely related to the box phenomenon: I have a cat that currently spends the night in an IKEA basket (https://www.ikea.com/at/en/p/risatorp-basket-white-90281618/ https://www.ikea.com/at/en/p/risatorp-basket-white-90281618/) that was actually meant for socks. At the beginning, some parts tend to stick out, but after a few hours, the "cat liquid" has filled the available space and forms an almost horizontal surface, similar to this image in the article https://assets.rbl.ms/845008/980x.jpg https://assets.rbl.ms/845008/980x.jpg .

quietpain 3y ago

A Dutch biologist by the name of Midas Dekkers wrote a book about this phenomenon. It’s titled “The thigmophile” Haven’t read it yet, but thigmophillic behaviour is the opposite of claustrophobic. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midas_Dekkers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midas_Dekkers

mojo74 3y ago

A favourite with the kids My Cat Like to Hide in Boxes https://www.amazon.co.uk/Likes-Hide-Boxes-Picture-Puffin/dp/0140502424 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Likes-Hide-Boxes-Picture-Puffin/dp/...

bell-cot 3y ago

Critical, but not mentioned: How can we make keyboards (especially the ones on my home office computers) less attractive to cats? Perhaps keyboard-"print" cat nap mats, with USB-powered heaters, could serve as decoys? Would it help if those decoy mats were stiff-bottomed (to sit in my own lap), or made occasional clicking sounds? Might smaller cats prefer the "laptop" or "84-key" size, and larger cats a "104-key" model?

TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
This is a very common problem. There may be a simple solution. Cats have very sensitive noses and hate certain smells. Some smelly things are toxic - lavender, eucalyptus - but rosemary, thyme, and banana are cat-safe. I'd guess a few dabs of essential oil on your MBP would discourage those inconvenient cat snuggle attacks.
- hef19898 3y ago
  I think it is more about attention, you are focused on this noise making device and staring at that bright surface thingy while I want to be cuddled. Obviously, for a cat, that is completely unacceptable! What did work so in my case, is working on a laptop at the dinning table, because the cat knows the table is a no-go zone, at least when the humans are there. Well, it works most of the time, sometime curiosity is too strong.
dsr_ 3y ago
Two things, one positive and one negative. Positive: put a specific cat trap on your desk or nearby. The lid of a box of printer paper, or anything similarly sized; a folded towel. Negative: put a hard dust cover on your keyboard when you aren't using it. Now it's an uninteresting hard surface.
- jstarfish 3y ago
  > Now it's an uninteresting hard surface. ...that they will then sit on, because it still fits the shape of "box." Everyone is missing the point that the keyboard itself is rectangular/box-shaped. It delineates the boundaries of a territory they can occupy and claim for themselves. Get one of those ergonomic "wave" keyboards that aren't perfectly flat and I doubt they would sit on them. They like laptop keyboards even more. Not only are they boxy, they're heated.

AltruisticGapHN 3y ago

> hunkering down in small, enclosed spaces is a kind of “swaddling” behavior left over from cuddling up with their moms and littermates when they were kittens. This isn't cat specific. The concept of boundaries is very important in healing trauma, and just in general is a key concept in human being's emotional development. > This is peculiar. How safe and cozy can a cat feel sitting right out in the open on top of the water bill? Dodman describes it as something like the placebo effect. “This virtual box may provide some misplaced sense of security and psychosomatic comfort,” he writes. It is also an exercise I found in a book for healing trauma : make a circle on the floor with some towels, or a rope, or other objects and sit in it. It actually works and can help calm down the nervous system. It is a "patch" you could say, a substitute for weaker boundaries. When you sit in the circle, you can feel your body and emotions more easily. Understand this isn't "scientifically proven", but certainly experientially verified at least for me. Just wanted to highlight that the concept of sitting in a physical boundary, even if it's just a square drawn on the floor , does help with the nervous system and it's not cat specific - just something most people don't know about. I would have never thought this exercise would work, it seems silly and yet in my experience it has reliably, consistently, provided relief when my anxiety was really high. Someone with no significant trauma and relatively good boundaries (physical, emotional) may not notice any difference.

jstarfish 3y ago
You raise a few good points. > How safe and cozy can a cat feel sitting right out in the open on top of the water bill? Dodman describes it as something like the placebo effect. “This virtual box may provide some misplaced sense of security and psychosomatic comfort,” he writes. Maybe I was a cat in a past life (or on the autism spectrum in this one), but I get it. Urban environments make me very uncomfortable. It's even worse when I commute to them by train or taxi. Once I'm there, it's very overstimulating, and there is no space within them that I can call my own. I can't take a nap anywhere, I can't sit anywhere unbothered, there's just no place I can retreat to and say "this is my personal space; leave me alone or die." The problem is mitigated when I drive into the city, since my car serves that purpose. It's my space, others respect that, and the law would generally support my reaction to anyone that violates it. Meanwhile I'm just expected to deal with it when someone reclaims "my" seat at the library. I have a pet theory (no pun intended) that the homeless suffer the same plight, which compounds existing mental illness. There's zero stability for them. Noplace is theirs. Set up a camp somewhere and get chased away, find someone else looting it, or the city destroying it. Shelters and even jail are temporary-- never theirs. I have a bunch of cats and see them do what I think I do. Sometimes, one gets pushed around a bit too much. They'll fuck off and camp out on some paperwork, inside a stray Amazon box or on top of the fridge (which doubles as a vantage point). Each delineates what is very clearly a personal space for them. Usually they don't get bothered again, but if they do, they do a total 180, become the aggressor and fuck the intruder up-- effectively fighting from a defensive position...which is exactly the comfort I get from having a car in the city (which I know creates problems for everyone; I avoid cities as much as possible). > It is also an exercise I found in a book for healing trauma : make a circle on the floor with some towels, or a rope, or other objects and sit in it. It actually works and can help calm down the nervous system. It is a "patch" you could say, a substitute for weaker boundaries. When you sit in the circle, you can feel your body and emotions more easily. The "personal space" theory definitely isn't for everyone-- my wife can't relate to any of it and yet sensory deprivation is what works for her. When she's overwhelmed, muting one or more senses (blindfold, noise-cancelling headphones, etc.) is what brings her back down. Maybe it's a male/female thing-- rather than reshaping her environment like I do, she reshapes her own perception of it. > Someone with no significant trauma and relatively good boundaries (physical, emotional) may not notice any difference. Definitely!

endeavour 3y ago

A house is just a big box really. Why do humans love boxes so much?

spidersenses 3y ago
Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes made of ticky-tacky...
- hinkley 3y ago
  Little boxes on a hillside and they all look just the same.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

fatih-erikli 3y ago

They feel what we feel when we get in cars.

smeej 3y ago
I derive no enjoyment from getting in cars, and certainly wouldn't prefer being in a car to being outside. I don't think I follow your point.
- fatih-erikli 3y ago
  I don't think cats enjoy being in a box too. They do it to regulate their body temperature in cold weathers
  - smeej 3y ago
    The article says otherwise.

cmiller1 3y ago

When I was small enough to fit inside of them I absolutely loved playing in cardboard boxes too!

caseysoftware 3y ago

When my kids noticed our cat sitting in the box looking around, I called it his "tank." So they promptly drew tank treads on the side and colored it green and built a paper turret. Now he looks rather regal sitting in his tank. So yes, my kids gave heavy weapons to the animal definitely plotting an overthrow of the humans. I'm sorry.

bombcar 3y ago
Search for “cat tank” and you can mobilize like it’s 1939.

eastern 3y ago

It's not just cats but their larger relatives too. Just do an image search for 'Lions in boxes', 'Tigers in boxes' and so on.

hinkley 3y ago
Big cats obliterate boxes. I’ve seen one in a wheelbarrow before, but I think it was just a leopard.

killjoywashere 3y ago

Tell me you don't find it relaxing to sit in the closet.

glonq 3y ago

Yes, but do 8 out of 10 cats enjoy a carrot in a box? #RipSean

kobalsky 3y ago

something that is not mentioned in the article of commented here is that at least with my cats they used to go into ambush mode when they got into boxes. my feeling was that since they are always hunting, they like anything that doubles as resting and hiding place to ambush anything that goes by.

euroderf 3y ago

I should think it's pretty obvious why cats like boxes. Cats evolved into a niche where they are both predator and prey. So consider the benefits of a lair-with-a-view. For the role of predator, they have a view plus concealment. Ambush! For the role of prey, they have both concealment and protection. I think the only real question is, what's with cats sitting in rectangles painted on the floor ? Is it just the usual cat thing of going to wherever humans' attention is going ? Or does a rectangle activate some pattern recognition circuit ? If so, does it still work if the cat has grown up in an environment without objects with right angles, such as / including boxes ?