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This seems to answer a question I asked myself just yesterday: A neighbour's cat and my cat had a argument, no actual fighting - just lots of staring, yowling
by SeanDav 13y ago
This seems to answer a question I asked myself just yesterday:
A neighbour's cat and my cat had a argument, no actual fighting - just lots of staring, yowling and that strange growling sound cats make. Nothing too questionable there, but then my cat did something rather strange - she started moving away by walking extremely slowly and I mean extremely slowly. I wondered what on earth she was up to but after reading this article I think it must have something to do with the fact that cats cannot seem to detect very slow motion. It appears that cats can move and position themselves in such a way that it may be undetectable (or nearly so) to another cat.
Of course there may be a completely different explanation, but I like this one.
- mratzloff 13y agoI suspect not. To do so would imply that cats are self-aware, which no one has been able to demonstrate.
- rquantz 13y agoOr that there is an evolutionary advantage to being able to escape other cats by moving slower than they can see.
- mratzloff 13y agoThe idea was that moving slowly implies that they recognized the other cat has the same limitations as itself. I am beginning to find Hacker News very tedious when people down-vote posts that they disagree with which were made in good faith.
- SeanDav 13y agoHave you ever seen a pride of lions hunting? The teamwork and understanding involved there is way beyond that required to recognize that another animal might not notice if one moves slowly. One very simple step is they recognize the concept of upwind and downwind, not to mention the concept of beaters, ambushers and the ability to dynamically change their strategy when circumstances change.