Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff Lauren Vogel bomb here. It's common knowledge that
Speaker 1: if an empty box of any size is left unattended
Speaker 1: and a cat finds it, that cat will sit inside
Speaker 1: of it. Tiny cats and large boxes, large cats and
Speaker 1: tiny boxes. It doesn't matter, as the saying goes, if
Speaker 1: I fits, I sits, and it doesn't seem to even
Speaker 1: have to be a box. It turns out that any
Speaker 1: rectangle will do. A piece of paper, a laptop, of
Speaker 1: anything rectangular seems to light up that box sitting instinct
Speaker 1: in house cats. In the Twitter hashtag cat square highlighted
Speaker 1: this cat quirk. I'm merely taping an empty square on
Speaker 1: the floor was enough to lower a cat to sit
Speaker 1: or lie down inside of it. A couple of years later,
Speaker 1: this hashtag would help animal psychology researcher Gabriella Smith of
Speaker 1: Hunter College, City, University of New York a construct an
Speaker 1: experiment to gauge cat cognition. In April one, the journal
Speaker 1: Applied Animal Behavior Science published her research entitled if I
Speaker 1: fits I Sits? A Citizen science investigation into illusory contour
Speaker 1: susceptibility in domestic cats. The Smith had seen hashtag cats
Speaker 1: square on Twitter and knew that cats would sit inside
Speaker 1: a two D square made of tape, not just inside
Speaker 1: a three D box. For the article of this episode
Speaker 1: is based on how stuff Work. Spoke with Smith, she said, so,
Speaker 1: then the question became does this square actually have to
Speaker 1: be there? When we ask what is this animal seeing?
Speaker 1: People think of using dogs because they're so easily trained,
Speaker 1: But cats are the perfect candidate because we already know
Speaker 1: they will sit in a two D square. Not only
Speaker 1: to cats not have to be trained to do this,
Speaker 1: they don't even have to come into a lab to
Speaker 1: do it. A cat owners could easily take shapes to
Speaker 1: the floor and record their cat's reactions. Thus, the first
Speaker 1: cat cognition experiment to use citizen scientists was born. And
Speaker 1: what better timing than during the COVID nineteen pandemic. Smith
Speaker 1: put out the call for volunteers via Twitter in June
Speaker 1: of Much of the world was on lockdown to some degree,
Speaker 1: and cat owners were looking for something, anything, really to
Speaker 1: do in their homes. Plus, Smith notes cats performed best
Speaker 1: at home in the lab, they wouldn't behave naturally. She
Speaker 1: designed the experiment so that the humans could gather cat
Speaker 1: data over six days. Participants were given templates to print out,
Speaker 1: a square to tape to the floor, and a set
Speaker 1: of four pac mans, as Smith calls them, that could
Speaker 1: make an illusory square. These pac man's are circles that
Speaker 1: each have a ninety degree wedge cut out, But when
Speaker 1: you arrange them at the corners of an imaginary square,
Speaker 1: with the empty wedges or pac man mouths pointed inward,
Speaker 1: they formed the four corners of the imaginary square. Scientifically,
Speaker 1: this is called a kanitsa square, which means that pieces
Speaker 1: of an image are constructing a complete image in our brains.
Speaker 1: Our minds see an image in this case of a
Speaker 1: square in the negative space, our eyes connect the dots.
Speaker 1: If you face the pac man mouths away from each other,
Speaker 1: we don't perceive any significant shape. But would cats see
Speaker 1: the same things? Smith went into the experiment with frankly
Speaker 1: low expectations and an open mind that she was truly
Speaker 1: curious to know the answer to her question, but will
Speaker 1: cats sit in the square that isn't really there? She
Speaker 1: had no preconceived ideas what the cats might choose to do.
Speaker 1: She says that this was helpful in designing the experiment,
Speaker 1: as her biases for one shape or another weren't in play.
Speaker 1: She said, I was lucky I had any participants at all,
Speaker 1: given how cats are. She gathered data over the summer
Speaker 1: of with participant humans sending in five minute videos of
Speaker 1: the shapes on the floor. If the cat positioned its
Speaker 1: body within any of the shapes for at least three seconds,
Speaker 1: it counted as a data point. Of course, cats are cats.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the cat would saunter through the video without sitting
Speaker 1: at all. A Smith said, I watched a lot of
Speaker 1: empty videos as she recruited five DRED participants, and thirty
Speaker 1: were able to complete the entire six day sequence of tests.
Speaker 1: Of those, nine cats chose at least one of the
Speaker 1: shapes by sitting inside of it with all four feet
Speaker 1: for at least three seconds. Though the data set is small,
Speaker 1: cats did indeed choose the kanitsa square illusion as often
Speaker 1: as they chose the complete square that was taped on
Speaker 1: the floor. They chose both of these more often than
Speaker 1: the non shape made by the pac man's that we're
Speaker 1: facing away from each other a while. This was Smith's
Speaker 1: first time using citizen scientists to gather data. She since
Speaker 1: been involved in another half dozen citizen science studies with
Speaker 1: dogs in the Animal Behavior in Conservation program at Hunter College.
Speaker 1: She notes that you don't have to have the cleverest
Speaker 1: animal in the world to participate in projects like this.
Speaker 1: You just have to follow the instructions then let your
Speaker 1: pet do its thing or not. It's all data science.
Speaker 1: This research might seem pretty low stakes, but it offers
Speaker 1: new insight into animal cognition and psychology. We now know
Speaker 1: that cats can connect the dots and see a square
Speaker 1: that isn't there. It's also a springboard for more potential research.
Speaker 1: Smith said, we see videos from zoos of large cats
Speaker 1: sitting in boxes, which makes sense because it's safe, like
Speaker 1: a cave or den, But it begs the question, what
Speaker 1: a wildcat sit in the outline of a square or
Speaker 1: a kinitz As square that isn't a square at all.
Speaker 1: This is the fun part of science, asking questions and
Speaker 1: devising ways to learn the answers, and then letting those
Speaker 1: answers inspire new questions. Today's episode is based on the
Speaker 1: article I five Fit si sits The Science behind Cats
Speaker 1: Sitting in Squares on House to works dot com, written
Speaker 1: by Kristen hall Geisler. The brain Stuff is production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio in partnership with how stuff Works dot Com,
Speaker 1: and it's produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts my
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.