Specialists from Japan have established that cats can associate words with images without prompts or rewards. The corresponding experiment is published in Scientific Reports.
The study involved 31 adult cats. Each animal was presented with a verbal test originally designed to study speech perception in human infants.
The pets were shown animations on a monitor accompanied by two made-up words, "keraru" and "parumo." The animals were then given a break, after which they were shown the animations again, but this time in a different order.
As a result, the cats spent longer looking at the screen when they heard a familiar word. Some of them even had dilated pupils during this time.
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