A new study suggests that cats are able to learn and associate human words with particular objects or images more quickly than human babies.
This research builds on previous studies that have shown cats can follow human pointing, understand who they can trust, recognize their own name, and even learn the names of familiar cats and people.
The study, led by cognitive scientist Saho Takagi from Abazu University in Japan, tested 31 adult pet cats by showing them two short cartoon animations on a laptop while playing an audio track of a made-up word spoken by their caregiver.
The cats were able to form picture-word associations after just a few repetitions, demonstrating their ability to learn human language.
While there are differences between this study and previous studies on human babies, the results suggest that cats pay attention to what we say and try to understand us more than we realize.
Further research into these abilities could help us better understand cognition and communication across different species.
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