🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

This study tested whether cats modify their behaviour according to their owner's displayed emotion, comparing happy and angry expressions. Cats showed behaviours consistent with detecting the emotiona…

Moriah Galvan, Jennifer Vonk · Animal Cognition · 2016

Adapting the Strange Situation Test used with infants and dogs, researchers observed how cats behaved when their owner left and returned. Cats displayed distinct attachment styles: secure individuals…

Kristyn Vitale, Alexandra Behnke, Monique Udell · Current Biology · 2019

Researchers tested whether cats, like dogs, can use a human pointing gesture to locate hidden food. Cats successfully chose the indicated container above chance, showing they can read this human commu…

Adam Miklosi and colleagues · Journal of Comparative Psychology · 2005

Building on emotion research, this study asked whether cats integrate visual and auditory emotional information from both humans and other cats. Cats were presented with facial expressions and vocalis…

Serenella d'Ingeo, Angelo Quaranta and colleagues · Animals · 2020

This early comparative study assessed how cats and dogs solve visible and invisible displacement tasks, the benchmarks Piaget used to chart object permanence in human infants. Both species succeeded a…

Estrella Triana, Robert Pasnak · Animal Learning and Behavior · 1981

Cognition has been studied far less in cats than in primates, birds, or dogs, but a coherent picture is emerging across the felid family. This overview synthesises research on object permanence, spati…

Several studies have tested how well cats exploit human-given cues, such as pointing, gazing, or tapping, to find hidden food in object-choice tasks. This overview surveys the range of cues cats can a…

Beyond learning from other cats, researchers have asked whether cats can copy or learn from human demonstrators. This overview surveys exploratory studies, including reports that cats can be trained t…

Whether cats catch or respond to the emotions of others is an active research question. This overview surveys studies examining whether cats are affected by their owners' emotional states, respond to…

Anecdotes describe cats approaching distressed owners, and researchers have begun testing whether cats respond differentially to human emotional signals such as crying. This overview surveys explorato…

Whether companion animals understand human communicative gestures bears on how domestication reshapes cognition. This overview surveys research on cats' ability to use human pointing to locate hidden…

Although less commonly trained than dogs, cats learn readily through operant conditioning, and this overview surveys research and applied work on training them. It covers the use of positive reinforce…

The cat-human relationship has measurable physiological dimensions, and this overview surveys research probing them. It covers studies of behavioural and hormonal responses, including investigations o…

Cats form bonds with specific people, and research has probed how they recognise their humans. This overview surveys evidence that cats identify owners primarily through voice, as shown in vocal-recog…

Self-control tasks, such as choosing a larger delayed reward over a smaller immediate one, probe impulse regulation and have been studied across many species. This overview surveys the limited researc…

A growing body of research asks whether cats are sensitive to whether a human is paying attention to them, a basic component of social cognition. This overview surveys experiments testing whether cats…

When confronted with an ambiguous, potentially frightening object such as a noisy fan, do cats look to their owner for guidance? In this experiment owners reacted to the object with either a positive…

Isabella Merola and colleagues · Animal Cognition · 2015

Surveying owners of over two thousand pet cats, researchers used questionnaire ratings to identify five reliable personality dimensions, dubbed the Feline Five: neuroticism, extraversion, dominance, i…

Carla Litchfield and colleagues · PLOS ONE · 2017