Wednesday Funny: Cats like to sit even in illusory boxes

Cat owners know that their fur-babies love to sit in bags, baskets, and boxes.

But a new study found that cats would sit even in “boxes” that are optical illusions!

Emma Young reports for the British Psychological Society’s Research Digest, May 24, 2021, that a new study by Gabriella E. Smith at City University of New York and colleagues, published in Applied Animal Behaviour Science, found that cats treated an illusory square as a real square.

Of the 500 pet cats and owners who signed up to take part, 30 completed all the trials. The owners were not told the purpose of the experiment. 

Every day for six days, each owner put their cat out of the room while they taped a pair of stimuli to the floor. The researchers instructed them each day on which two of three stimuli to use:

1. An actual square.
2. An illusory Kanizsa square, in which four Pacman-type cut-outs are arranged to suggest the lines of a square.
3. The Kanizsa control, in which the Pacman-type cut-outs face the other way, so that there is no illusion of a square.

The owner then put on sunglasses (so their cat couldn’t use the owner’s gaze as a cue to what to do), brought the cat into the room, and started videoing. If, within five minutes, their cat sat or stood within either of the shapes, the trial ended. Either way, after five minutes, they submitted the result.

Of those 30 cats who completed all the trials:

• On 8 occasions, a cat sat inside an actual square.
• On 7 occasions, a cat sat inside a Kanizsa square.
• A cat sat inside the Kanizsa control only once.

This suggests that cats treat the illusory Kanizsa squares just like real ones.

~E

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