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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of

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Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and

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Speaker 1: it's cat a clock here on Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: We're gonna be doing cats today, that's right. Uh. Particularly,

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Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about cats sitting in boxes, being

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Speaker 1: interested in boxes, and we'll get a little bit into

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Speaker 1: into humans sitting and sleeping in boxes as well. So

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Speaker 1: let's start by pointing out the obvious here, and that

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Speaker 1: is that cats love a good box. We don't have

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Speaker 1: to tell you this. Cat owners or just Internet users

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Speaker 1: out there are probably familiar with this scenario, often summed

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Speaker 1: up with the MIMI headline or caption If I fits,

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Speaker 1: I sits. If the cat at all fits in the box,

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Speaker 1: then it will sit in the box. Even if the

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Speaker 1: cat doesn't quite fit in the box, you know, the

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Speaker 1: cat will. A cat will often uh take the occasion

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Speaker 1: to create a sort of muffin top of its entire

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Speaker 1: body around the lip of a somewhat too small box

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Speaker 1: for it. Yeah, there's some hilarious pictures of this online. Um.

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Speaker 1: Now for my own partic I can mainly speak to

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Speaker 1: my cat, or well, the cat that lives in my house, Mochy.

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Speaker 1: She I don't know if she's my cat. She's kind

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Speaker 1: of her own self cat. And um, you're her feeder.

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Speaker 1: I feed her and I clean up her poop desert

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Speaker 1: and as as a thank you, she attacks my feet

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Speaker 1: regularly and wakes me up between the hours of four

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Speaker 1: am and six am demanding to be fit. Uh. But

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Speaker 1: and she likes my wife a lot more than me.

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Speaker 1: But anyway, I'm still moch is good. I love her.

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Speaker 1: Moch is a good cat. She's amusing, she's cute. And

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Speaker 1: whenever we get a package in, we'll give her the

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Speaker 1: chance to check out that box. So we'll put it

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Speaker 1: there on the floor. Four She doesn't always sit inside it.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes she'll just come out and check it out. If

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Speaker 1: we put it on its side, she may walk inside it.

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Speaker 1: Maybe she'll slit down, maybe she won't, Maybe she'll hang out.

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Speaker 1: It's totally up to her. I've often thought about the

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Speaker 1: conflict that must go on within the mind of a

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Speaker 1: cat when it is confronted with its carrier crate, you

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Speaker 1: know the box that people you. When I was a kid,

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Speaker 1: we would take our cat to the vet, not in

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Speaker 1: a not in like one of those nice crates that

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Speaker 1: has like the cage door and all that. But it

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Speaker 1: was a cardboard box that had like fold up handles

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Speaker 1: and breathing holes and stuff like. It was made for

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Speaker 1: a cat to go in it. Yes, it was like

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Speaker 1: a cardboard box specifically manufactured for cat delivery. Okay, yeah,

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Speaker 1: we never never had one of those. Uh we we

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Speaker 1: have just a plastic and metal cat carrier. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's a totally different enclosure for for a cat that

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Speaker 1: is often associated with the stress of going other places, right.

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Speaker 1: I mean, that's what I was thinking about though, is that,

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Speaker 1: like there there there are two different things pulling in

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Speaker 1: the mind at the same time. On the one hand,

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Speaker 1: you've got the learned associations like, oh that thing means

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Speaker 1: the vet. That's bad. But still it's still a box.

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Speaker 1: I don't know, it looks pretty good in there. I

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Speaker 1: don't know. Mochi does not go for the for the

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Speaker 1: cat carrier. She she has negative associations there, but but

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Speaker 1: you know, she'll she'll definitely go and she at least

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Speaker 1: check out a shipping container that has come in um

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Speaker 1: And also we have shelves in our home that are

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Speaker 1: roughly cube shaped have cube shaped spaces in them, and

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Speaker 1: some of these are filled up with books or or

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Speaker 1: have like a drawer put in them. But we also

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Speaker 1: have some at ground at a floor level in the

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Speaker 1: house that have other things in them, like one have

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Speaker 1: shoes uh and he's used as a shoe hutch, and

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Speaker 1: other has a trio of decorative statues in them. And

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Speaker 1: Mochi loves darting into these spaces, um, you know, sort

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Speaker 1: of plotting from within them. And of course she'll move

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Speaker 1: the statues around whenever she's in there, so we frequently

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Speaker 1: have to put the statues back where they go. Oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: I can imagine being jealous of the inanimate objects that

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Speaker 1: get their own little beholes. Yeah, or I mean, I

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Speaker 1: think a huge part of this. So there are two

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Speaker 1: things right. First of all, a cat, of domestic cat

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Speaker 1: is essentially both predator and prey. So they have this

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Speaker 1: relationship with the world where they are that you know,

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Speaker 1: they need to find hiding places so as to stalk

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Speaker 1: their prey and to engage in these sort of behaviors

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Speaker 1: that they've evolved to uh uh to do. Or the

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Speaker 1: other side is they need to be able to hide themselves.

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Speaker 1: They need to be wary of things that might be

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Speaker 1: after them. And then on top of all of that,

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Speaker 1: if you have an indoor cat like Mochi is an

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Speaker 1: indoor cat um, they live in a confined environment that

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Speaker 1: they and they ultimately belong in a wider world. They

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Speaker 1: shouldn't go out there. She should not go out there.

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Speaker 1: She's not ready for it. There's too much, uh, there's

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Speaker 1: too much out there to freak her out. And also

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Speaker 1: that she's gonna eat birds, she's an invasive species. All

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Speaker 1: of that. So she is where she is, but it

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Speaker 1: kind of makes them a little stir crazy, I think,

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Speaker 1: you know. So they have to make the most out

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Speaker 1: of the space they have. And so if there is

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Speaker 1: a space and a shelf for a new box, they're

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Speaker 1: gonna go check it out, just like you would check

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Speaker 1: it out if you had not left the house in

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Speaker 1: you know, five years, except maybe to a facility where

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Speaker 1: I get punctured with needles. Yes, yeah, you know it.

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Speaker 1: Get create. That's your universe, you know. And and and and

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Speaker 1: so you can maybe understand some of these behaviors. But

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Speaker 1: then there there are other aspects of of cat fascination

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Speaker 1: with with new items that that I've I've found intriguing.

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Speaker 1: So this cat of ours, Mochi, also loves, and I

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Speaker 1: mean loves, a new set of Lego or Ikea instructions.

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Speaker 1: If these rectangular papers are introduced into the house and

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Speaker 1: for any amount of time and she sees them, she

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Speaker 1: will set on them. She will go up and she

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Speaker 1: will she will have a seat on them. She may

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Speaker 1: sleep on them. Likewise, if they are print outs from

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Speaker 1: the computer, if the boy leaves his homework out, then

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Speaker 1: the cat will inevitably sleep on that the on that paperwork.

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Speaker 1: We've had some very important paperwork in the house that

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Speaker 1: has been left out in the cat will then decide

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Speaker 1: to sleep on it. I feel like this is not

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Speaker 1: confined just two cats. It may be more prevalent in cats,

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Speaker 1: but I've noticed in my dog he loves to if

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Speaker 1: we put out a set of instructions on the floor,

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Speaker 1: or any kind of roughly rectangular shaped flat thing on

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Speaker 1: the floor, there's a real good chance he will move

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Speaker 1: on top of it. Which is weird with with animals, right,

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Speaker 1: our pet animals, because for the most part, I mean,

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Speaker 1: they're not supposed that they're technically not supposed to be

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Speaker 1: able to go everywhere generally there are places I don't

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Speaker 1: want my cat delay and walk, but if people are

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Speaker 1: out of the house, yeah, she can kind of go

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Speaker 1: wherever she wants. And yet it's going to be the

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Speaker 1: I kea instruction manual, it's going to be the Lego

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Speaker 1: manual or some paperwork. Well, this was actually taken to

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Speaker 1: another level of absurdity by something that connects to some

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Speaker 1: of the articles we're going to talk about today, which

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Speaker 1: was a viral hashtag on Twitter called hashtag cat squares.

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Speaker 1: Did you read about this at the time, Um, I

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Speaker 1: don't think I saw it at the time, but I've

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Speaker 1: I've been catching up on it. Yeah, I I don't

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Speaker 1: remember being aware of this either. But essentially what it

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Speaker 1: was was people were posting on Twitter photos where they

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Speaker 1: would get some tape, just like you know, some painter's

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Speaker 1: tape or something, and lay it down on the floor

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Speaker 1: to make a square, and then their cat would come

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Speaker 1: over and sit inside the square. Why strange. I mean,

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Speaker 1: there's something clearly interesting going on with this behavior, and

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Speaker 1: it seems I mean, with with stuff like this that's

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Speaker 1: just anecdotal observations. You always wonder if there's some amount

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Speaker 1: of just coincidence. The cats just sitting somewhere, or maybe

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Speaker 1: it's just sitting where you happen to be looking. You know,

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Speaker 1: it's taking cues from you. But it at least seemed

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Speaker 1: consistent enough that people were saying, like, yeah, cats sit

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Speaker 1: down on pieces of paper or instructions or squares of

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Speaker 1: other kinds, and even if you just make a square

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Speaker 1: outline out of tape, they'll come get into that. It

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Speaker 1: seemed consistent enough that this is maybe a scientific phenomenon

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Speaker 1: worth investigating. And so this is gonna connect to at

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Speaker 1: least one piece of research that we'll talk about in

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Speaker 1: today's episode. Hat tip that I first got the idea

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Speaker 1: to do this episode today when I came across a

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Speaker 1: piece by Jennifer will Let in Ours Technica that was

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Speaker 1: covering this recent study that used crowdsourced participation to test

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Speaker 1: visual perception and sitting behavior and cats. Will come back

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Speaker 1: to that specific study in a bit, but first I

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Speaker 1: wanted to move backward a bit and look at the

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Speaker 1: thing that we started talking about, which was the idea

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Speaker 1: of cats being obsessed with getting inside boxes, not squares

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Speaker 1: on the floor, but three dimensional boxes. As to the

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Speaker 1: question of why they love boxes so much, there are

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Speaker 1: a lot of answers you can find out there, and

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Speaker 1: I think this is something I encounter a lot when

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Speaker 1: I look into a question of like why is my

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Speaker 1: dog doing X? Or why does a cat do X?

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Speaker 1: Basically anything within the realm of explaining the behavior of

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Speaker 1: common domestic animals. You can usually find a lot of

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Speaker 1: veterinary science animal behavior experts of varying levels of legitimacy

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Speaker 1: and their credentials, offering their opinion, but often nothing quite

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Speaker 1: like a solid scientific consensus answer that's provable by experiment.

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Speaker 1: But you can find some some good evidence that helps

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Speaker 1: back up a few competing explanations that might be complementary

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Speaker 1: of one another or might feed different aspects of box

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Speaker 1: occupation behaviors. Now, one very commonly cited answer is simply

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Speaker 1: that cats like boxes because cats are cryptic animals. They

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Speaker 1: like to hide. And this has to do with a

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Speaker 1: couple of things, both with perceptions of safety and with

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Speaker 1: predatory advantage. Yeah, like I said, they are both predator

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Speaker 1: and prey, and therefore it behooves them to be good

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Speaker 1: at hiding, to have hiding places scouted out, and to

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Speaker 1: hang out in them from time to time. Right, And

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Speaker 1: so one example of a cat behavior expert talking about

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Speaker 1: this that I came across was there's a guy named

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Speaker 1: Steven Zawistowski of the s p c A who didn't

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Speaker 1: explain or video about this for Business Insider in and

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Speaker 1: I've seen that one quoted a bunch of times in

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Speaker 1: other outlets, and his claims are basically that cats like

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Speaker 1: to hide, and a box gives them a sense of

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Speaker 1: safety and security because once they get into the box,

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Speaker 1: they limit the number of angles that they can be

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Speaker 1: approached from. You know, you're basically like limiting the amount

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Speaker 1: of space you need to be constantly aware of that

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Speaker 1: you need to be monitoring. And this seems like a

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Speaker 1: very reasonable guest to me, at least for part of

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Speaker 1: the explanation. I would actually guess a similar psychological drive

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Speaker 1: probably underlies a lot of human behaviors. For example, the

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Speaker 1: desire to sit with your back to a wall as

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Speaker 1: opposed to sitting in the middle of the room. What's

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Speaker 1: the table everybody wants at a restaurant? You you know,

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Speaker 1: almost everybody prefers the booth in the back corner of

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Speaker 1: the room as opposed to the table that's right in

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Speaker 1: the middle of the room where you know, there's stuff

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Speaker 1: going on behind your back. Yeah, it feels safer and

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Speaker 1: feels like you're you're just less likely to be surprised.

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Speaker 1: Even if you're not really worried about physical danger, there's

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Speaker 1: something kind of happening at an instinctual level. A part

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Speaker 1: of it might even not be concerns about physical danger,

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Speaker 1: but concerns about social surprise and social threats, you know,

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Speaker 1: things that you would need to be aware of if

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Speaker 1: they were happening, even if they're not physically threatening. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, you might want to know who else is

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Speaker 1: coming into the restaurant, or you know, you want to

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Speaker 1: be able to see when your server is approaching that

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Speaker 1: sort of thing. You just wanted a general awareness of

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Speaker 1: your surroundings. And if you've got your back to a wall,

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Speaker 1: you're sort of wedged into a corner and all snug

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Speaker 1: and cozy, you can basically see anybody who's going to

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Speaker 1: approach you. But Zawistowski also says that boxes provide a

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Speaker 1: vantage point from which cats can dash out an attack,

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Speaker 1: and this connects to the other prong of what you

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Speaker 1: were saying about them being both predator and prey. You

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Speaker 1: know that it is good if you're a predator to

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Speaker 1: have a sort of information advantage on your prey. You

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Speaker 1: want to be hidden from them. You want to be

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Speaker 1: able to see them, but them not be able to

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Speaker 1: see you, and a hiding place like a box is

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Speaker 1: perfect for that. Now, I will say this seems potentially

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Speaker 1: true as an explanation of some boxes, but not all,

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Speaker 1: because I noticed that a lot of times cats seem

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Speaker 1: to really enjoy squeezing into small boxes that are, for example,

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Speaker 1: only open on the top, so they can't really see

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Speaker 1: anything around them. They couldn't possibly be watching something that

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Speaker 1: they would you know, lunge out at because they can

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Speaker 1: only see the ceiling or something like that. Am I

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Speaker 1: wrong about this? Now? You you know, you definitely see

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Speaker 1: this as well. Our cat likes to venture into the

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Speaker 1: laundry hamper pretty regularly, and and uh, you know, I

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Speaker 1: guess I should also point out that that our cat,

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Speaker 1: like a lot of cats, uses a litter box that

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Speaker 1: you enter from the top, so it's essentially like a hamper,

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Speaker 1: uh for of for for the litter um. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: I guess in thinking about this, because certainly if the

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Speaker 1: cat is at the bottom of the Andrey hamper, she's

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Speaker 1: not really able to see anything anymore. But I guess

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Speaker 1: one thing we always have to keep in mind with

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Speaker 1: cats is that they do have extremely acute hearing. So

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Speaker 1: that's true. Um, you know, they're their dependence on the

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Speaker 1: visual world is not the same as human dependence on

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Speaker 1: the visual world. That's a good point. Have you ever

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Speaker 1: seen Mochi spring out of the top of a box,

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Speaker 1: even at something that that she couldn't immediately see? M m,

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Speaker 1: not not really, but she does, you know, she will

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Speaker 1: spring out of the box. I guess that's another thing

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Speaker 1: to keep in mind is that cats are are are

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Speaker 1: generally quite agile as well, so uh, leaving the bottom

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Speaker 1: of the hamper is not the same as us emerging

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Speaker 1: from the bottom of a well, you know, like we

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Speaker 1: would have to painstakingly claw our way back up. The

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Speaker 1: cat can just launch itself out like a rocket and

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Speaker 1: it's good to go. Yes, So, well, I would not

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Speaker 1: consider this explanation. I don't know proven. I guess it

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Speaker 1: seems like this is a very reasonable guess understanding the

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Speaker 1: cat role in its native environment and uh, and the

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Speaker 1: normal kinds of environmental pressures that would be on it

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Speaker 1: and how it would respond to them. That cats like

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Speaker 1: hiding places because as you say, they're both predator and prey,

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Speaker 1: they need a place that you know, limits the angles

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Speaker 1: they can be approached from and to to provide a

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Speaker 1: sense of security and safety for them and provides them

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Speaker 1: advantage point that they could potentially use to launch a

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Speaker 1: predatory attack from. So this all seems like a reasonable

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Speaker 1: gas s barring other evidence. But I did find some

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Speaker 1: more evidence for the enclosure security hypothesis that was documented

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Speaker 1: in another article that I was reading. So there was

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Speaker 1: an article by Brian Gardner in Wired in called why

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Speaker 1: do Cats Love Boxes So Much? And this pulled together

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Speaker 1: some other studies. So the author here, for one thing,

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Speaker 1: spoke to a researcher named Claudia Vinky of you trek

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Speaker 1: To University in the Netherlands, who has published scientific research

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Speaker 1: on the effects of access to a box on the

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Speaker 1: stress levels of cats in animal shelters. This research was

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Speaker 1: done in conjunction, so Vinky was the lead author, but

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Speaker 1: it was also done with L. M. Godein and UH

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Speaker 1: W J. R. Vander Lye in Applied Animal Behavior Science

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Speaker 1: in and this study points out that stress in shelter animals,

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Speaker 1: including cats, is important for a number of reasons. Of course,

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Speaker 1: It's just important on its own for the psychological welfare

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Speaker 1: of the cat. But stress is also an important factor

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Speaker 1: contributing to the physical health of animals like cats, because

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Speaker 1: higher levels of stress and animals could contribute to higher

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Speaker 1: rates of infectious disease due to immuno deficiency from the

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Speaker 1: cortisol response. Yeah. And I think anybody who's owned cats

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Speaker 1: for any amount of time, you you grow to realize that,

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Speaker 1: oh yeah, did they get stressed out? They can, They

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Speaker 1: can definitely get get ill. Um, particularly with ours like

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Speaker 1: she has bladder issues, uh, and easily um compound by

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Speaker 1: her not drinking enough water or being just a little

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Speaker 1: bit too stressed. And then if and if that happens,

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Speaker 1: then then everybody in the house is stressed. Oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: I I can imagine. I feel for everybody in that scenario. Um.

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Speaker 1: But anyway, so the authors here right. The aim of

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Speaker 1: the present study was to determine the effect of a

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Speaker 1: hiding box on stress levels of newly arrived cats in

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Speaker 1: a Dutch animal shelter. Therefore, nineteen newly arrived shelter cats

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Speaker 1: were randomly divided into two groups. So the test group

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Speaker 1: had ten cats and they had access to a box

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Speaker 1: and then there was a control group of nine without

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Speaker 1: a hiding box, and to determine the stress levels, they

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Speaker 1: would do these observational or behavioral observations over a fourteen

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Speaker 1: day period that we're done according to something called the

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Speaker 1: Kessler and Turner cat stress score. Now, the authors point

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Speaker 1: out that there are some limitations here because you the

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Speaker 1: the cats, uh stress score. Thing they're doing here is

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Speaker 1: just based on how having to observe the cat and

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Speaker 1: sort of count numbers of behaviors that would indicate or

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Speaker 1: believed to indicate certain levels of relaxation or stress response.

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Speaker 1: That you could probably get more accurate information about stress

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Speaker 1: responses by physiological measurements, like you know, maybe measuring levels

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Speaker 1: of cortisol in the body or something like that. Though

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Speaker 1: the problem there is that in order to do that,

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Speaker 1: you would have to handle already stressed cats, which would itself,

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Speaker 1: uh sort of probably increase the amount of stress that

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Speaker 1: the cats are experiencing. So this is kind of a

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Speaker 1: difficult thing to measure accurately. But they did their best

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Speaker 1: with this observational behavioral scoring system. And this was taking

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Speaker 1: place during the cage quarantine period for incoming cats, so

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Speaker 1: they have to go through a quarantine period, you know,

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Speaker 1: as they're taken into the shelter, And the major findings

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Speaker 1: of this research where the cats in the test group,

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Speaker 1: so those were the cats with access to a hiding box,

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Speaker 1: showed less stress pretty quickly within the first couple of days,

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Speaker 1: with significant differences in the amount of stress between the

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Speaker 1: test group and the control group on days three and four.

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Speaker 1: But eventually, over time the stress levels of the cats

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Speaker 1: in the control group came down. It just took a

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Speaker 1: lot longer, So by day fourteen, the cats in both

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Speaker 1: groups were roughly the same in terms of stress. So

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Speaker 1: it looks like what happened is access to a hiding

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Speaker 1: box helped lower the stress of cats faster in a

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Speaker 1: frightening novel situation, but after a couple of weeks it

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Speaker 1: was no longer making a difference on average. But this

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Speaker 1: would kind of make sense if you imagine that the cats,

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Speaker 1: you know, when you first get to a new shelter,

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Speaker 1: that's probably the highest stress as they're like becoming accustomed

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Speaker 1: to this novel situation. So they're going to have the

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Speaker 1: most stress then and the most need for coping behaviors,

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Speaker 1: for example hiding in a box. And the authors pointed

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Speaker 1: out that even when the cats didn't have access to

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Speaker 1: a box, say, the cats in the control group would

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Speaker 1: sometimes try to do hiding behaviors without a box. For example,

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Speaker 1: they would try to hide behind their litter box. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I think anybody who has if you've ever gotten a

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Speaker 1: new cat or or brought a cat into a new environment,

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Speaker 1: this is frequently what happens. Like the cat and they

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Speaker 1: spend the first few days or or even longer just

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Speaker 1: hanging out in like one particular hiding spot, say in

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Speaker 1: a you know, in a closet or something like that,

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Speaker 1: and the author is also uh. They cite a study

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Speaker 1: by cry and Casey in the journal Animal Welfare from

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Speaker 1: two thousand seven that found basically the same thing. It

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Speaker 1: found that access to a hiding box decreased the amount

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Speaker 1: of apparent stress behaviors in cats at a at an

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Speaker 1: adoption center and did not make adoption any less likely.

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Speaker 1: I think one thing they were wondering about is, okay,

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Speaker 1: does if you give a cat a hiding space, will

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Speaker 1: that make the cat less social and thus make it

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Speaker 1: less likely to get adopted? And they found no um.

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Speaker 1: Cats that were that had access to a hiding space

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Speaker 1: were no less likely to get adopted, and they seem

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Speaker 1: to be less stressed. So hiding spaces for cats are

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Speaker 1: are good, it seems all around. But in that Wired

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Speaker 1: article by Gardener, UH, he cites an email exchange that

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Speaker 1: he had with Claudiavinki, the author of that that first

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Speaker 1: Dutch study UH, and she says that quote, hiding is

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Speaker 1: a behavioral strategy of the species to cope with environmental

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Speaker 1: changes and stressors. So new stuff is going on, you

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Speaker 1: don't know how to deal with it. It's it's freaking

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Speaker 1: you out. How do you react? You go and hide

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Speaker 1: and if you have a box, that's going to really

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Speaker 1: help chill you out. Thank you, thank you. Now. There

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Speaker 1: is an interesting other observation that Gardner dug up in

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Speaker 1: this article, another line of reasoning that seems a little

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Speaker 1: bit related but actually different. So he cites the Cambridge

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Speaker 1: University Press guide to the Domestic Cat, The Biology of

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Speaker 1: its Behavior, that's the title, UH, and this book observes

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Speaker 1: that quote cats do not appear to develop conflict resolution

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Speaker 1: strategies to the extent that more gregarious species do. So

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Speaker 1: they may attempt to circumvent agonistic encounters by avoiding others

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Speaker 1: or dec reasing their activity so that that's an interesting

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Speaker 1: sort of twist on this right, that the the retreat

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Speaker 1: to a box for a cat maybe not only a

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Speaker 1: safety mechanism like fearing physical danger, but also a social behavior,

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Speaker 1: a way of managing social relationships by avoiding potential conflict

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Speaker 1: with other members of the household or social group. So,

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Speaker 1: you know, a dog might have certain conflict resolution behaviors.

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Speaker 1: You know, it gets into a conflict or has unresolved

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Speaker 1: kind of social tension with another dog or another human

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Speaker 1: in the house, and and it has its own set

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Speaker 1: of behaviors who knows what. You know, those might be uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, licking or whatever, or a certain kind of

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Speaker 1: like display of like like a kind of submissive display

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Speaker 1: or something like that. Cats, meanwhile, are more likely to

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Speaker 1: if they're looking for a way to deal with unresolved

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Speaker 1: social tension or something within the group, they might just retreat.

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Speaker 1: They go and hide and and just practice avoidance behaviors.

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Speaker 1: And that's interesting because I think sometimes these concerns that

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Speaker 1: the concerns for for safety versus the concern for avoiding

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Speaker 1: social conflict, those can get kind of conflated even when

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Speaker 1: humans think about their own behavior, But they're actually distinct phenomena,

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Speaker 1: like when we were talking about why do you want

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Speaker 1: to sit at the back of the restaurant? You can

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Speaker 1: easily start thinking about that in terms of safety, which

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Speaker 1: might be an element there, but there could also just

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Speaker 1: be like a social reasoning to it. Yeah, like to

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Speaker 1: to apply this as we've applied similar discussions in the

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Speaker 1: past to the open office working environment. Like, I think

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Speaker 1: that's one of the huge flaws of that is that

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Speaker 1: you know, you can say, well, it's about it's about

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Speaker 1: coworkers being able to approach each other and and share

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Speaker 1: ideas and all and all and so forth, but it

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Speaker 1: also means, uh, if someone walks into the office, like

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Speaker 1: they can see you and you have to see them, Like,

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Speaker 1: there's no like cats would hate that. Cats would be

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Speaker 1: totally anti office. Of course, they would want a cubicle.

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Speaker 1: And I don't know, I you know, I guess that

433
00:22:57,960 --> 00:22:59,359
Speaker 1: a lot of it comes down to different work styles,

434
00:22:59,359 --> 00:23:01,639
Speaker 1: different personnel, the styles. But I'm with the cats on this.

435
00:23:01,760 --> 00:23:04,080
Speaker 1: Let us have our boxes. Oh me too. I mean

436
00:23:04,320 --> 00:23:06,480
Speaker 1: not to be antisocial, you know, I like being able

437
00:23:06,520 --> 00:23:09,760
Speaker 1: to work with my coworkers when it's useful to work together,

438
00:23:09,840 --> 00:23:11,440
Speaker 1: but like, you know, when when I don't want to

439
00:23:11,480 --> 00:23:13,560
Speaker 1: be doing that. I don't want that as it just

440
00:23:13,800 --> 00:23:17,159
Speaker 1: a constant sort of like interaction threat presenting at a

441
00:23:17,160 --> 00:23:20,160
Speaker 1: low level all day long. Yeah, I I don't want

442
00:23:20,760 --> 00:23:23,679
Speaker 1: my workspace to be like, you know, the the doggy

443
00:23:23,800 --> 00:23:26,520
Speaker 1: daycare center, where it's just dogs running around in circles

444
00:23:26,520 --> 00:23:28,760
Speaker 1: the whole time. You know. I like the idea that

445
00:23:28,880 --> 00:23:32,520
Speaker 1: being cats, uh you know, engaging with each other when

446
00:23:32,560 --> 00:23:35,000
Speaker 1: they want to, setting in laps or you know, laying

447
00:23:35,000 --> 00:23:36,800
Speaker 1: in the sun when they want to, but also retreating

448
00:23:36,800 --> 00:23:40,240
Speaker 1: to boxes when that is their preference. Here's the way

449
00:23:40,280 --> 00:23:42,880
Speaker 1: I think of it. I'm not against interacting with other

450
00:23:42,920 --> 00:23:45,159
Speaker 1: other people. I don't think I'm antisocial, but I'd like

451
00:23:45,200 --> 00:23:46,760
Speaker 1: to be able to flip a switch. I'd like to

452
00:23:46,760 --> 00:23:49,240
Speaker 1: be able to flip the interaction switch on and flip

453
00:23:49,280 --> 00:23:52,400
Speaker 1: it off, as opposed to having it in some ambiguous

454
00:23:52,440 --> 00:23:55,879
Speaker 1: middle space. But so, while all of this stuff that

455
00:23:55,880 --> 00:23:58,920
Speaker 1: we're talking about makes sense, the idea of of cats

456
00:23:59,160 --> 00:24:01,600
Speaker 1: having lower stre us when they have a space they

457
00:24:01,600 --> 00:24:04,520
Speaker 1: can hide in for obvious safety reasons, but then also

458
00:24:04,600 --> 00:24:08,880
Speaker 1: for maybe these uh these social interaction mediation reasons. Um,

459
00:24:09,560 --> 00:24:11,240
Speaker 1: this brings me back to a question I think I

460
00:24:11,320 --> 00:24:13,440
Speaker 1: sort of raised earlier. I guess this is a slightly

461
00:24:13,520 --> 00:24:17,400
Speaker 1: different version of it. I can easily think of examples

462
00:24:17,520 --> 00:24:21,480
Speaker 1: of cats getting into boxes that don't really fit the

463
00:24:21,960 --> 00:24:26,880
Speaker 1: hiding safety or avoidance hypotheses. Sometimes the cat is clearly

464
00:24:26,920 --> 00:24:30,440
Speaker 1: not hiding at all, for example, when cats cram into

465
00:24:30,480 --> 00:24:33,720
Speaker 1: boxes with low walls that function more as a kind

466
00:24:33,720 --> 00:24:37,440
Speaker 1: of tray for the cat's body than walls that would

467
00:24:37,480 --> 00:24:40,199
Speaker 1: offer any form of concealment. And these are some of

468
00:24:40,200 --> 00:24:42,960
Speaker 1: the funniest examples of cats getting into boxes, but clearly

469
00:24:43,000 --> 00:24:45,720
Speaker 1: lots of cats love to do this. Yeah, there's a

470
00:24:45,840 --> 00:24:48,960
Speaker 1: there's a fun board game called Isle of Cats that's

471
00:24:48,960 --> 00:24:51,199
Speaker 1: all about cats and like doing some sort of like

472
00:24:51,280 --> 00:24:54,720
Speaker 1: tetrisy things with cats. It's a beautifully designed game, and

473
00:24:54,960 --> 00:24:57,720
Speaker 1: when you open the box, the interior of the top

474
00:24:57,800 --> 00:25:01,280
Speaker 1: lid informs you the this is where your cat can

475
00:25:01,320 --> 00:25:04,000
Speaker 1: sit while you play the game, and they encourage you, like,

476
00:25:04,119 --> 00:25:06,560
Speaker 1: you know, to take photos of and share it, which

477
00:25:06,560 --> 00:25:09,760
Speaker 1: is which is a really fun idea, but it's also yeah,

478
00:25:09,760 --> 00:25:11,919
Speaker 1: it's not. It's not deep enough for a cat to

479
00:25:11,960 --> 00:25:15,359
Speaker 1: actually gain any kind of me perceivable at least a

480
00:25:15,440 --> 00:25:18,639
Speaker 1: human shelter or you know, or you know, a space

481
00:25:18,680 --> 00:25:21,679
Speaker 1: from which to to hunt their their humans feet or

482
00:25:21,880 --> 00:25:24,840
Speaker 1: you know, so forth. It's it's just too shallow. It

483
00:25:25,000 --> 00:25:28,320
Speaker 1: seems like it would not provide the sort of cover

484
00:25:28,440 --> 00:25:31,160
Speaker 1: that they would be craving exactly. So I think this

485
00:25:31,240 --> 00:25:34,080
Speaker 1: is where it comes in that there are probably different

486
00:25:34,240 --> 00:25:37,919
Speaker 1: pressures that are that are complementary of one another and

487
00:25:38,240 --> 00:25:43,520
Speaker 1: driving cat box occupation behaviors. Cats probably occupy different boxes

488
00:25:43,640 --> 00:25:46,960
Speaker 1: for different reasons. And when a cat occupies this tray

489
00:25:47,119 --> 00:25:49,639
Speaker 1: kind of box, you know, the kind of tight squeeze box,

490
00:25:50,440 --> 00:25:53,080
Speaker 1: I suspect, and this is something that's offered up in

491
00:25:53,119 --> 00:25:56,439
Speaker 1: Gardeners article as well, that a lot of this probably

492
00:25:56,480 --> 00:26:01,439
Speaker 1: has to do with temperature. So I notice a claim

493
00:26:01,520 --> 00:26:04,320
Speaker 1: that was cited in that Vinky study, the Dutch cat

494
00:26:04,400 --> 00:26:08,600
Speaker 1: shelter study, and it was that the author's cited previous

495
00:26:08,600 --> 00:26:12,600
Speaker 1: research by roy In that was getting sited in rochlets

496
00:26:12,600 --> 00:26:18,679
Speaker 1: and that showed that cats prefer material that maintains the

497
00:26:18,760 --> 00:26:22,640
Speaker 1: same temperature, with the quintessential example here being a towel.

498
00:26:22,800 --> 00:26:25,320
Speaker 1: You put a towel on the floor, cat will probably

499
00:26:25,320 --> 00:26:27,919
Speaker 1: prefer to get on the towel as opposed to the

500
00:26:27,960 --> 00:26:31,800
Speaker 1: floor itself or other materials. That are less stable in

501
00:26:31,920 --> 00:26:35,640
Speaker 1: terms of temperature and uh and so I think cats

502
00:26:35,720 --> 00:26:40,320
Speaker 1: and I would guess dogs to find less temperature variability

503
00:26:40,359 --> 00:26:44,720
Speaker 1: in insulated materials like a towel or like the corrugated

504
00:26:44,760 --> 00:26:48,359
Speaker 1: cardboard that makes up many boxes. And this is building on,

505
00:26:48,440 --> 00:26:51,280
Speaker 1: of course, the fact that animals have a a natural

506
00:26:51,400 --> 00:26:56,520
Speaker 1: biological environmental constraint known as their therm neutral zone. Easy

507
00:26:56,560 --> 00:26:58,919
Speaker 1: way to think about this, it's basically the range of

508
00:26:58,960 --> 00:27:02,159
Speaker 1: temperatures in which you are comfortable due to your biology

509
00:27:02,760 --> 00:27:05,480
Speaker 1: uh and and the reason you're comfortable within a certain

510
00:27:05,600 --> 00:27:08,159
Speaker 1: range of temperatures is that your body is having to

511
00:27:08,240 --> 00:27:11,760
Speaker 1: do less work to adapt you to that, you know,

512
00:27:11,760 --> 00:27:15,480
Speaker 1: because you need to maintain a relatively constant internal body temperature.

513
00:27:16,000 --> 00:27:18,840
Speaker 1: And if you and if the range of external temperatures

514
00:27:18,960 --> 00:27:21,879
Speaker 1: is outside of the thermonutral zone, then your body is

515
00:27:21,880 --> 00:27:24,800
Speaker 1: going to need to be spending extra energy either heating

516
00:27:24,960 --> 00:27:27,920
Speaker 1: or cooling itself in order to keep your internal temperature

517
00:27:28,440 --> 00:27:30,720
Speaker 1: uh in the study zone that it needs to be.

518
00:27:31,320 --> 00:27:34,400
Speaker 1: According to Gardener, and this was news to me, the

519
00:27:34,400 --> 00:27:37,960
Speaker 1: thermo neutral zone for a domestic cat is roughly eighty

520
00:27:38,040 --> 00:27:41,520
Speaker 1: six to ninety seven degrees fahrenheit and is the source there.

521
00:27:41,560 --> 00:27:44,360
Speaker 1: He cites a two thousand six study by the National

522
00:27:44,440 --> 00:27:47,240
Speaker 1: Research Council. And so if you think about that, that's

523
00:27:47,359 --> 00:27:51,520
Speaker 1: roughly like twenty degrees higher than the normal therm neutral

524
00:27:51,640 --> 00:27:54,000
Speaker 1: zone for human beings, which is, you know, going to

525
00:27:54,040 --> 00:27:56,240
Speaker 1: be somewhere in like the low seventies or something. Is

526
00:27:56,240 --> 00:27:59,160
Speaker 1: but the temperature that most people most often feel very

527
00:27:59,160 --> 00:28:02,760
Speaker 1: comfortable in. Yeah, I mean this, this is a huge

528
00:28:02,760 --> 00:28:05,480
Speaker 1: reason why cats frequently want to sit in your lap,

529
00:28:05,520 --> 00:28:08,000
Speaker 1: you know, because your lap is warm. It's it's kind

530
00:28:08,000 --> 00:28:09,560
Speaker 1: of the perfect combination of the two because of the

531
00:28:09,600 --> 00:28:12,479
Speaker 1: underlying body heat. But then on top of that, you know,

532
00:28:12,560 --> 00:28:14,560
Speaker 1: you generally have you know, some sort of slacks or

533
00:28:14,640 --> 00:28:17,280
Speaker 1: jeans or some sort of garment going on, and that

534
00:28:17,440 --> 00:28:20,679
Speaker 1: is where they want to be, especially when uh, you know,

535
00:28:20,840 --> 00:28:24,280
Speaker 1: the ambient temperature is is far less than that that

536
00:28:24,440 --> 00:28:27,760
Speaker 1: desired zone. Yeah, so I think about how how much

537
00:28:28,119 --> 00:28:29,960
Speaker 1: you know, cats I've had in my life. You still

538
00:28:29,960 --> 00:28:33,040
Speaker 1: love to sit on top of a computer. Those things

539
00:28:33,119 --> 00:28:36,160
Speaker 1: get hot, but you know, they like it, or lay

540
00:28:36,160 --> 00:28:38,320
Speaker 1: in the sun. You know, the sun's pouring in through

541
00:28:38,320 --> 00:28:40,920
Speaker 1: the window and it's making this little hot spot on

542
00:28:40,960 --> 00:28:43,680
Speaker 1: the floor, and the cat loves to lay there. Um.

543
00:28:43,720 --> 00:28:46,200
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just down to the fact that again

544
00:28:46,280 --> 00:28:49,560
Speaker 1: I never really realized this before, but that in houses

545
00:28:49,600 --> 00:28:53,240
Speaker 1: that are comfortable for humans, it seems like usually cats

546
00:28:53,240 --> 00:28:56,280
Speaker 1: are going to be pretty cold. Yeah yeah, And and

547
00:28:56,320 --> 00:28:59,680
Speaker 1: you you may find them also gravitating towards rooms that

548
00:28:59,760 --> 00:29:03,080
Speaker 1: are or even just marginally hotter than the rest of

549
00:29:03,120 --> 00:29:06,040
Speaker 1: the house. Uh. So, like we have a middle room

550
00:29:06,120 --> 00:29:10,320
Speaker 1: that has that has only has one window, and so

551
00:29:10,360 --> 00:29:13,160
Speaker 1: it's not losing much much heat through there, and it

552
00:29:13,200 --> 00:29:14,880
Speaker 1: tends to be a little warmer, and that's where the

553
00:29:14,920 --> 00:29:17,840
Speaker 1: cat will be. Uh, that's where she's going to hang out.

554
00:29:18,200 --> 00:29:21,000
Speaker 1: Gardener sites. That two thousand six study by the NRC

555
00:29:21,120 --> 00:29:25,040
Speaker 1: which found quote most cats housing areas are around seventy

556
00:29:25,080 --> 00:29:28,640
Speaker 1: two degrees fahrenheit, a good fourteen degrees colder than a

557
00:29:28,760 --> 00:29:33,120
Speaker 1: domestic cats minimum therm neutral temperature. So imagine if you

558
00:29:33,160 --> 00:29:36,080
Speaker 1: were always living in a house that was fourteen degrees

559
00:29:36,080 --> 00:29:38,960
Speaker 1: fahrenheit colder than the temperature that you would like it

560
00:29:39,040 --> 00:29:43,120
Speaker 1: to be. It doesn't sound great, no, no, but here

561
00:29:43,160 --> 00:29:47,080
Speaker 1: we go boxes to the rescue, because again, corrugated cardboard

562
00:29:47,160 --> 00:29:51,000
Speaker 1: is a great insulator, and also think about confined spaces.

563
00:29:51,480 --> 00:29:55,240
Speaker 1: The insulated material and the tight space offered by especially

564
00:29:55,280 --> 00:29:57,840
Speaker 1: a sort of body fitting box that sort of you know,

565
00:29:58,120 --> 00:30:02,440
Speaker 1: muffintop cat tray that can help trap body heat, pushing

566
00:30:02,480 --> 00:30:06,080
Speaker 1: a cat closer to its comfortable temperature range. And this

567
00:30:06,120 --> 00:30:08,640
Speaker 1: actually seems like a very good explanation to me to

568
00:30:08,640 --> 00:30:12,000
Speaker 1: to help cover the cases where cats are seeking out

569
00:30:12,040 --> 00:30:15,360
Speaker 1: boxes that are clearly not serving any kind of hiding purpose.

570
00:30:16,680 --> 00:30:19,400
Speaker 1: I suspect there's a lot to this one, but I

571
00:30:19,400 --> 00:30:23,120
Speaker 1: wanted to mention one more possible hypothesis for for cat

572
00:30:23,200 --> 00:30:27,000
Speaker 1: box preferences that I came across. This one was cited

573
00:30:27,040 --> 00:30:30,440
Speaker 1: in an article originally published on The Conversation republished in

574
00:30:30,440 --> 00:30:33,800
Speaker 1: a number of other places by Nicholas H. Dodman, who

575
00:30:33,880 --> 00:30:38,880
Speaker 1: is an American professor emeritus of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University.

576
00:30:39,360 --> 00:30:40,960
Speaker 1: I was looking around. Looks like he does a lot

577
00:30:41,000 --> 00:30:44,920
Speaker 1: of TV appearances as an animal behavior expert, and it

578
00:30:44,960 --> 00:30:47,520
Speaker 1: also looks like he has some products he sells, some

579
00:30:47,800 --> 00:30:50,760
Speaker 1: pet type stuff, so caveat on those things. But he

580
00:30:50,800 --> 00:30:53,520
Speaker 1: does point to a piece of published research that would

581
00:30:53,560 --> 00:30:55,520
Speaker 1: at least tell us a little bit about the possible

582
00:30:55,640 --> 00:30:59,560
Speaker 1: animal neuroendo chronology of box preferences, and the idea is

583
00:30:59,640 --> 00:31:05,480
Speaker 1: this it's comfort via flank pressure on the body. Dodman writes, quote,

584
00:31:05,720 --> 00:31:08,480
Speaker 1: think of it as a kind of swaddling behavior. The

585
00:31:08,560 --> 00:31:12,920
Speaker 1: close contact with the boxes interior, we believe releases endorphins,

586
00:31:13,320 --> 00:31:18,160
Speaker 1: nature's own morphine like substances, causing pleasure and reducing stress.

587
00:31:18,640 --> 00:31:21,440
Speaker 1: And the research that he cites in support of this

588
00:31:21,680 --> 00:31:24,200
Speaker 1: is a study that he co authored with the animal

589
00:31:24,240 --> 00:31:27,720
Speaker 1: behaviorist Temple Grandin, who is you might know her from.

590
00:31:27,760 --> 00:31:31,320
Speaker 1: She's also written a lot about autism spectrum disorders UM.

591
00:31:31,480 --> 00:31:36,000
Speaker 1: But they they found that pigs were comforted by what

592
00:31:36,040 --> 00:31:39,840
Speaker 1: they call flank pressure or lateral side pressure, so gentle

593
00:31:39,880 --> 00:31:43,040
Speaker 1: squeezing against the side of the body that seemed to

594
00:31:43,080 --> 00:31:47,000
Speaker 1: trigger a relaxation response in these mammals, at least partially

595
00:31:47,080 --> 00:31:50,080
Speaker 1: due to a release of endorphins, according to Dodman. And

596
00:31:50,120 --> 00:31:53,760
Speaker 1: this was published in Pharmacology, Biochemistry, and Behavior in nineteen

597
00:31:53,840 --> 00:31:57,800
Speaker 1: eighty nine. So that's yet another possibility that it could

598
00:31:57,800 --> 00:32:01,440
Speaker 1: be there is some kind of route through which having

599
00:32:01,560 --> 00:32:04,720
Speaker 1: something pressing up tightly but you know, not too hard,

600
00:32:04,760 --> 00:32:08,520
Speaker 1: but gently squeezing against the sides of its body causes

601
00:32:08,720 --> 00:32:13,200
Speaker 1: a hormone release inside the cat's body that leads to

602
00:32:13,440 --> 00:32:18,120
Speaker 1: decreased stress, a kind of a general euphoric response. Uh,

603
00:32:18,160 --> 00:32:20,880
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's the cuddling feeling. And this also

604
00:32:20,920 --> 00:32:23,000
Speaker 1: seems plausible to me. It would I think it would

605
00:32:23,080 --> 00:32:26,600
Speaker 1: overlap significantly with the kinds of stimuli that cats would

606
00:32:26,640 --> 00:32:30,520
Speaker 1: seek out for the thermoregulatory reasons we mentioned just a

607
00:32:30,520 --> 00:32:33,280
Speaker 1: minute ago. But I wonder you could maybe create an

608
00:32:33,320 --> 00:32:36,840
Speaker 1: experiment to differentiate these two hypotheses by using boxes of

609
00:32:36,880 --> 00:32:42,160
Speaker 1: different temperatures or insulation potentials or something. Yeah, but anyway,

610
00:32:42,320 --> 00:32:45,480
Speaker 1: I think we have ended up with a number of good,

611
00:32:45,600 --> 00:32:49,800
Speaker 1: plausible reasons to understand why cats would seek out boxes,

612
00:32:49,840 --> 00:32:52,600
Speaker 1: and even boxes of very different kinds. You know, some

613
00:32:52,960 --> 00:32:56,040
Speaker 1: would be rooted in in hiding and safety and and

614
00:32:56,080 --> 00:33:02,080
Speaker 1: predatory advantage or maybe mitigating potential potential social conflict within

615
00:33:02,160 --> 00:33:04,880
Speaker 1: other members of the household or or the herd whatever

616
00:33:04,920 --> 00:33:06,520
Speaker 1: you would call it of cats. So what is the

617
00:33:06,720 --> 00:33:09,160
Speaker 1: group name for cats? Well, I mean, like you have

618
00:33:09,200 --> 00:33:13,120
Speaker 1: a feral colony of cats. Okay, the colony, let's call

619
00:33:13,160 --> 00:33:15,800
Speaker 1: it that. But then the other things would possibly be

620
00:33:15,880 --> 00:33:20,160
Speaker 1: a thermoregulation because in human houses, cats are often going

621
00:33:20,200 --> 00:33:24,200
Speaker 1: to be cold and this potential thing rooted in the

622
00:33:24,240 --> 00:33:27,640
Speaker 1: release of endorphins or the reduction of stress due to

623
00:33:27,800 --> 00:33:30,360
Speaker 1: pressure on the side of the body. But this brings

624
00:33:30,440 --> 00:33:32,680
Speaker 1: us back to a more difficult question that I really

625
00:33:32,720 --> 00:33:34,680
Speaker 1: don't have an answer to. I mean, we can try

626
00:33:34,680 --> 00:33:37,840
Speaker 1: to speculate, but I don't yet have a strong uh

627
00:33:38,000 --> 00:33:41,720
Speaker 1: hypothesis for why it is that cats would like the

628
00:33:41,800 --> 00:33:44,680
Speaker 1: hashtag cat square thing. You know, why why do cats

629
00:33:44,720 --> 00:33:48,080
Speaker 1: like the square on the floor the IKEA instructions or

630
00:33:48,120 --> 00:33:50,600
Speaker 1: even just the square on the floor made of tape

631
00:33:50,880 --> 00:33:53,240
Speaker 1: that are not even three dimensional, not going to press

632
00:33:53,280 --> 00:33:55,959
Speaker 1: their sides, they're not insulated things, they're gonna keep their

633
00:33:56,000 --> 00:33:59,280
Speaker 1: body warm, They're not going to offer any hiding potential.

634
00:33:59,600 --> 00:34:01,440
Speaker 1: I really don't know what's going on there, but it

635
00:34:01,480 --> 00:34:04,320
Speaker 1: does very much interest me. I guess it's it's largely

636
00:34:04,400 --> 00:34:08,640
Speaker 1: like unlike anything that they would encounter in the wild.

637
00:34:09,160 --> 00:34:12,000
Speaker 1: Is one I guess one sort of thing that comes

638
00:34:12,000 --> 00:34:15,440
Speaker 1: to my mind is that like a neat square that

639
00:34:15,640 --> 00:34:19,080
Speaker 1: is uh that is outlined on a on an otherwise

640
00:34:19,400 --> 00:34:23,759
Speaker 1: featureless floor, flat surface, like when would you when would

641
00:34:23,760 --> 00:34:26,040
Speaker 1: you ever have anything like that in the wild. Maybe

642
00:34:26,080 --> 00:34:30,440
Speaker 1: it's just a it's something that they would be unprepared for,

643
00:34:30,600 --> 00:34:33,080
Speaker 1: you know, and that would would sort of create a

644
00:34:33,080 --> 00:34:38,560
Speaker 1: loophole or you know, cognitive error. I'm not sure. It's

645
00:34:38,600 --> 00:34:41,680
Speaker 1: kind of a novelty thing like that's weird. I mean

646
00:34:41,719 --> 00:34:44,000
Speaker 1: the other thing that I kind of suspect though one

647
00:34:44,080 --> 00:34:46,839
Speaker 1: of the studies I'm about to look at would have

648
00:34:46,920 --> 00:34:50,240
Speaker 1: some evidence going against this, I would kind of suspect.

649
00:34:50,400 --> 00:34:53,440
Speaker 1: I wonder if it has to do with the with

650
00:34:53,600 --> 00:34:57,520
Speaker 1: manipulation of the owner's attention. So, you know, when you

651
00:34:57,600 --> 00:35:02,080
Speaker 1: put down some IKEA instructions on the floor, the cat

652
00:35:02,239 --> 00:35:04,799
Speaker 1: may very well noticed that the owner is paying a

653
00:35:04,840 --> 00:35:08,280
Speaker 1: lot of attention to those instructions, and that by coming

654
00:35:08,320 --> 00:35:10,920
Speaker 1: and sitting on top of the instructions, it could very

655
00:35:10,920 --> 00:35:14,000
Speaker 1: well be like, we'll pay attention to me. Huh, well

656
00:35:14,040 --> 00:35:16,960
Speaker 1: maybe so. I mean, I haven't looked at any literature

657
00:35:16,960 --> 00:35:19,359
Speaker 1: on this, but I imagine anyone out there has ever

658
00:35:19,840 --> 00:35:21,799
Speaker 1: tried to set and work using a laptop, you'll have

659
00:35:21,800 --> 00:35:25,040
Speaker 1: that scenario where the cat perhaps wishes to be fed,

660
00:35:25,600 --> 00:35:28,040
Speaker 1: and it's gonna it's gonna want to hang out right

661
00:35:28,080 --> 00:35:31,439
Speaker 1: next to you, sometimes with its front paws on your

662
00:35:31,480 --> 00:35:34,960
Speaker 1: mouse pad, sometimes even attacking your hand if you move

663
00:35:35,040 --> 00:35:38,600
Speaker 1: the mouse around, so um I I wouldn't put it

664
00:35:38,640 --> 00:35:43,200
Speaker 1: past them. Um, I guess the The one thought that

665
00:35:43,239 --> 00:35:45,400
Speaker 1: does come to mind is that if the cat wants

666
00:35:45,440 --> 00:35:49,759
Speaker 1: your attention, usually the cat will come to you, you know,

667
00:35:49,960 --> 00:35:53,399
Speaker 1: like you would have to be rather close to those instructions,

668
00:35:53,440 --> 00:35:55,920
Speaker 1: and at least in my own household, I see the

669
00:35:55,960 --> 00:35:59,799
Speaker 1: cat drawn to those uh I key instructions or lego instructions,

670
00:36:00,080 --> 00:36:02,360
Speaker 1: even if they are just you know, left to the

671
00:36:02,440 --> 00:36:04,920
Speaker 1: side and they're not really being engaged with by by

672
00:36:04,920 --> 00:36:07,080
Speaker 1: the humans. That's a good point. I feel like the

673
00:36:07,120 --> 00:36:09,880
Speaker 1: occupation often takes place when your back is turned, you know,

674
00:36:10,120 --> 00:36:12,239
Speaker 1: you you go look at something else, then you come

675
00:36:12,280 --> 00:36:14,600
Speaker 1: back and and the cat or in my case even

676
00:36:14,600 --> 00:36:17,200
Speaker 1: the dog is on top of whatever flat thing you've

677
00:36:17,239 --> 00:36:20,279
Speaker 1: just put on the floor. Yeah, and now yeah, I mean,

678
00:36:20,360 --> 00:36:22,600
Speaker 1: I guess I'm I'm less inclined to think that the

679
00:36:22,840 --> 00:36:25,799
Speaker 1: cat is going to be playing three D chess with

680
00:36:25,800 --> 00:36:28,000
Speaker 1: with you know, the social arrayment entremants of the house.

681
00:36:28,040 --> 00:36:30,920
Speaker 1: But then again, you do get into explanations for say,

682
00:36:31,080 --> 00:36:35,080
Speaker 1: um uh inappropriate urination in cats where it's tied to

683
00:36:35,680 --> 00:36:38,680
Speaker 1: uh the smells associated with owners and stuff like that.

684
00:36:38,760 --> 00:36:42,960
Speaker 1: So so there are some complex scenarios going on that

685
00:36:42,960 --> 00:36:45,440
Speaker 1: that maybe don't seem as a parent to you know,

686
00:36:45,480 --> 00:36:47,839
Speaker 1: the human owners of of the beings, because a part

687
00:36:47,880 --> 00:36:49,719
Speaker 1: of it comes down to the fact that that any

688
00:36:49,760 --> 00:36:51,440
Speaker 1: animal in your house, any pet, beat a dog or

689
00:36:51,480 --> 00:36:53,800
Speaker 1: a cat, they're going to live in a different sensory

690
00:36:53,840 --> 00:36:56,000
Speaker 1: realm than you do. You know, the parameters of that

691
00:36:56,080 --> 00:36:59,280
Speaker 1: sense realm are different, and of course just cognitively and socially,

692
00:36:59,280 --> 00:37:07,759
Speaker 1: they're different from ms as well. Thank well, maybe the

693
00:37:07,800 --> 00:37:09,919
Speaker 1: following will shed some kind of light. I'm not sure

694
00:37:09,920 --> 00:37:12,080
Speaker 1: it will, but but we'll try. So. This study that

695
00:37:12,160 --> 00:37:14,680
Speaker 1: was cited in that article by Jennifer will Let that

696
00:37:14,800 --> 00:37:17,360
Speaker 1: inspired me to want to talk about this today. Uh.

697
00:37:17,680 --> 00:37:21,160
Speaker 1: This study was published in the journal Applied Animal Behavior

698
00:37:21,239 --> 00:37:25,919
Speaker 1: Science and it is by Gabriella E. Smith, Philippe A. Sward,

699
00:37:26,120 --> 00:37:29,960
Speaker 1: and Sarah E. Biocier. It is called if I fits

700
00:37:30,000 --> 00:37:35,120
Speaker 1: I sits colan, a citizen science investigation into illusory contour

701
00:37:35,239 --> 00:37:41,280
Speaker 1: susceptibility in domestic cats Felis sylvestris catus. And essentially this

702
00:37:41,480 --> 00:37:45,280
Speaker 1: study built off of this observation or you know, people

703
00:37:45,280 --> 00:37:47,680
Speaker 1: have been posting all their cats square pictures on the internet.

704
00:37:47,719 --> 00:37:50,680
Speaker 1: They make a square made out of tape on the floor.

705
00:37:50,760 --> 00:37:53,120
Speaker 1: The cat, for some reason, we don't know quite why,

706
00:37:53,160 --> 00:37:55,680
Speaker 1: but for some reason comes and sits within the square.

707
00:37:56,320 --> 00:37:59,120
Speaker 1: The authors here we're looking into the question will cats

708
00:37:59,200 --> 00:38:02,239
Speaker 1: do that even for a square that isn't there but

709
00:38:02,440 --> 00:38:07,759
Speaker 1: is merely suggested by a visual illusion? And I thought

710
00:38:07,760 --> 00:38:10,319
Speaker 1: this was a great question, you know, like, do do

711
00:38:10,440 --> 00:38:13,879
Speaker 1: other animals see the same optical illusions that we do?

712
00:38:14,400 --> 00:38:16,919
Speaker 1: And it appears, at least in some cases, they do.

713
00:38:17,040 --> 00:38:19,080
Speaker 1: So this study was about whether they would fall for

714
00:38:19,160 --> 00:38:22,840
Speaker 1: a particular known visual illusion that's been documented for I

715
00:38:22,880 --> 00:38:25,960
Speaker 1: think at least several decades, now known as the Kanitza

716
00:38:26,120 --> 00:38:31,440
Speaker 1: contour illusion, named after an Italian psychologist named Gitano Kanitza.

717
00:38:31,800 --> 00:38:34,480
Speaker 1: And of course, if you want to picture a kanitsa square,

718
00:38:34,520 --> 00:38:36,680
Speaker 1: you can look it up on the internet. But I'll

719
00:38:36,719 --> 00:38:39,840
Speaker 1: try to describe it. Imagine a square that isn't there,

720
00:38:39,960 --> 00:38:43,879
Speaker 1: but is suggested by the mouths of four pac men.

721
00:38:44,600 --> 00:38:47,120
Speaker 1: So if you take a pac man or basically it's

722
00:38:47,160 --> 00:38:50,600
Speaker 1: just a disk with one quarter of it removed, and

723
00:38:50,640 --> 00:38:53,920
Speaker 1: then you face them at as if they were each

724
00:38:54,080 --> 00:38:57,120
Speaker 1: biting the corner of a square, but there is no square.

725
00:38:57,120 --> 00:38:59,640
Speaker 1: It's just the pac man with their mouths all turned

726
00:38:59,719 --> 00:39:03,719
Speaker 1: in at at four different corners. The visual illusion that's

727
00:39:03,760 --> 00:39:08,680
Speaker 1: created is the illusion of a non existent square. And so,

728
00:39:08,719 --> 00:39:11,480
Speaker 1: to quote from the the abstract of this article, the

729
00:39:11,480 --> 00:39:13,920
Speaker 1: authors here right, Uh, they want they wanted to know

730
00:39:14,000 --> 00:39:17,560
Speaker 1: if cats are also susceptible quote to sitting in enclosures

731
00:39:17,560 --> 00:39:21,200
Speaker 1: that are illusory in nature, use utilizing cats attraction to

732
00:39:21,320 --> 00:39:24,800
Speaker 1: box like spaces to assess their perception of the kanitza

733
00:39:24,880 --> 00:39:28,160
Speaker 1: square visual illusion. And so the interesting thing about the

734
00:39:28,200 --> 00:39:32,719
Speaker 1: study was that it basically crowd sourced. It's it's data

735
00:39:32,760 --> 00:39:36,239
Speaker 1: collection uh. To continue eating quote carried out during the

736
00:39:36,280 --> 00:39:40,920
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen pandemic. This study randomly assigned citizen science participants

737
00:39:41,000 --> 00:39:46,360
Speaker 1: booklets of six randomized counterbalance daily stimuli to print out, prepare,

738
00:39:46,480 --> 00:39:50,040
Speaker 1: and place on the floor in pairs. Owners observed and

739
00:39:50,160 --> 00:39:53,920
Speaker 1: video recorded their cat's behavior with the stimuli, and reported

740
00:39:53,960 --> 00:39:57,480
Speaker 1: findings from home over the course of six daily trials.

741
00:39:57,920 --> 00:40:01,040
Speaker 1: The study ultimately reached over five hundred pet cats and

742
00:40:01,080 --> 00:40:05,040
Speaker 1: cat owners, and of those, thirty completed all the studies trials.

743
00:40:05,239 --> 00:40:08,080
Speaker 1: This is one of the major limitations of like of

744
00:40:08,120 --> 00:40:11,120
Speaker 1: crowdsourcing citizen science. Right there, because they had a large

745
00:40:11,200 --> 00:40:15,640
Speaker 1: dropout rate, But the authors continue, of these nine cats,

746
00:40:15,680 --> 00:40:18,920
Speaker 1: subjects selected at least one stimulus by sitting within the

747
00:40:18,960 --> 00:40:22,960
Speaker 1: contours illusory or otherwise with all limbs for at least

748
00:40:22,960 --> 00:40:26,400
Speaker 1: three seconds. The study revealed that cats selected the Kanitza

749
00:40:26,440 --> 00:40:29,800
Speaker 1: illusion just as often as the square and more often

750
00:40:29,800 --> 00:40:33,160
Speaker 1: than the control, indicating that domestic cats may treat the

751
00:40:33,200 --> 00:40:38,120
Speaker 1: subjective Kanitza contours as they do real contours. Given the

752
00:40:38,200 --> 00:40:41,719
Speaker 1: drawbacks of citizen science projects such as participant attrition, again

753
00:40:41,760 --> 00:40:43,520
Speaker 1: that's the people who dropped out of the study as

754
00:40:43,520 --> 00:40:46,960
Speaker 1: it went on, future research would benefit from replicating the

755
00:40:47,000 --> 00:40:49,560
Speaker 1: study and controlled settings. To the best of our knowledge,

756
00:40:49,600 --> 00:40:52,000
Speaker 1: this investigation is the first of its kind in three

757
00:40:52,040 --> 00:40:55,920
Speaker 1: regards a citizen science study of cat cognition, a formal

758
00:40:55,960 --> 00:40:59,279
Speaker 1: examination the cats attraction to two D rather than three

759
00:40:59,360 --> 00:41:02,040
Speaker 1: D enclos posures. So this would be the first thing

760
00:41:02,120 --> 00:41:05,640
Speaker 1: studying the squares and not just the boxes, and study

761
00:41:05,680 --> 00:41:11,120
Speaker 1: into cats susceptibility to illusory contours in an ecologically relevant paradigm.

762
00:41:11,160 --> 00:41:13,720
Speaker 1: So there are the obvious caveats that that we mentioned

763
00:41:13,760 --> 00:41:15,880
Speaker 1: having to do with like the difficulty of conducting a

764
00:41:15,880 --> 00:41:18,640
Speaker 1: crowdsourced experiment of this kind, and it probably needs to

765
00:41:18,640 --> 00:41:22,759
Speaker 1: be backed up with other research under more controlled conditions.

766
00:41:22,800 --> 00:41:25,200
Speaker 1: That the authors do point out that there was a study,

767
00:41:25,239 --> 00:41:28,760
Speaker 1: I think from nineteen eight that also found some evidence

768
00:41:28,960 --> 00:41:32,960
Speaker 1: of perception of visual illusions such as the Knitza square

769
00:41:33,480 --> 00:41:36,400
Speaker 1: in cats, but I think these were in lab trained

770
00:41:36,440 --> 00:41:39,600
Speaker 1: cats who had been conditioned to sort of press a

771
00:41:39,640 --> 00:41:42,160
Speaker 1: button when they saw a square in order to get

772
00:41:42,160 --> 00:41:45,160
Speaker 1: a food reward. And when the cats were presented with

773
00:41:45,239 --> 00:41:48,000
Speaker 1: a Knitza square where there actually isn't a square, they

774
00:41:48,040 --> 00:41:51,040
Speaker 1: press the button. So it seems like they do perceive

775
00:41:51,160 --> 00:41:54,799
Speaker 1: the same visual illusions that we do. And actually was

776
00:41:54,840 --> 00:41:56,880
Speaker 1: looking up I was like, are there other examples of

777
00:41:56,920 --> 00:42:00,880
Speaker 1: cats responding to visual illusions that that effect humans? And

778
00:42:00,960 --> 00:42:02,920
Speaker 1: yes there are. I came across an example that I

779
00:42:02,920 --> 00:42:06,279
Speaker 1: thought was really interesting. Uh, this was about the rotating

780
00:42:06,560 --> 00:42:10,120
Speaker 1: snakes illusion, which I thought was just delightful. So the

781
00:42:10,360 --> 00:42:14,320
Speaker 1: rotating snake's illusion is a type of illusory motion where

782
00:42:14,360 --> 00:42:18,160
Speaker 1: a static image appears to be moving. Robert, I've attached

783
00:42:18,200 --> 00:42:20,440
Speaker 1: an image for you to stare at. I don't know

784
00:42:20,480 --> 00:42:23,680
Speaker 1: if you're getting the illusory motion, but I absolutely am.

785
00:42:23,719 --> 00:42:25,839
Speaker 1: In fact, I'm getting a little bit dizzy looking at

786
00:42:25,880 --> 00:42:29,239
Speaker 1: this right now, I need to scroll down. Um. But

787
00:42:29,520 --> 00:42:32,000
Speaker 1: uh So, there was a study published in the journal

788
00:42:32,000 --> 00:42:38,200
Speaker 1: Psychology inteen by both at ALL called Cats and Allusory Motion. First,

789
00:42:38,239 --> 00:42:41,440
Speaker 1: they note the anecdotal documentation of cats reacting to the

790
00:42:41,520 --> 00:42:45,000
Speaker 1: rotating snake's illusion, which is uh. They document a bunch

791
00:42:45,040 --> 00:42:49,799
Speaker 1: of videos of cats, especially kittens, being presented with a

792
00:42:49,920 --> 00:42:53,160
Speaker 1: print out of one of these illusions, and to describe it,

793
00:42:53,239 --> 00:42:56,960
Speaker 1: the rotating snakes are essentially a bunch of different discs

794
00:42:57,000 --> 00:43:01,320
Speaker 1: that have um that have different colors within the rings

795
00:43:01,360 --> 00:43:04,040
Speaker 1: of the disks, and the way the colors are arranged

796
00:43:04,520 --> 00:43:07,200
Speaker 1: causes the disks to appear to be kind of rotating

797
00:43:07,320 --> 00:43:10,280
Speaker 1: or slithering around even though they're not moving. And anyway,

798
00:43:10,320 --> 00:43:13,960
Speaker 1: this study documented how some cats had been observed to

799
00:43:14,280 --> 00:43:18,959
Speaker 1: react to static print outs of this illusion by attacking them,

800
00:43:19,080 --> 00:43:21,239
Speaker 1: essentially trying to prey on them as if they were

801
00:43:21,239 --> 00:43:24,239
Speaker 1: snakes moving around on the page. Uh, and that this

802
00:43:24,320 --> 00:43:27,600
Speaker 1: was supported by a cat owner survey that tried this

803
00:43:27,640 --> 00:43:30,000
Speaker 1: out on a bunch of cats and and found Yeah,

804
00:43:30,040 --> 00:43:32,879
Speaker 1: at least twenty nine percent of respondents said that their

805
00:43:32,880 --> 00:43:35,640
Speaker 1: cat reacted to this illusion. And Rob, I've got some

806
00:43:35,719 --> 00:43:38,319
Speaker 1: videos attached if you want to take a look. One

807
00:43:38,320 --> 00:43:40,319
Speaker 1: thing that I thought was interesting about this was that,

808
00:43:40,360 --> 00:43:44,120
Speaker 1: according to the survey of pet owners, cats that responded

809
00:43:44,160 --> 00:43:47,320
Speaker 1: to the illusion were on average two point four years

810
00:43:47,440 --> 00:43:50,760
Speaker 1: younger than cats that did not react to the illusion,

811
00:43:51,160 --> 00:43:54,239
Speaker 1: and the authors hypothesized this result from the beginning, not

812
00:43:54,320 --> 00:43:56,960
Speaker 1: because they thought that younger cats would be more likely

813
00:43:57,040 --> 00:44:00,399
Speaker 1: to see the illusion, but just because younger cat are

814
00:44:00,440 --> 00:44:03,520
Speaker 1: more likely on average to react to motion within their

815
00:44:03,560 --> 00:44:07,080
Speaker 1: visual field by attacking it, and older cats, I think,

816
00:44:07,120 --> 00:44:09,839
Speaker 1: are more likely to see the illusion at the same rate.

817
00:44:09,920 --> 00:44:13,840
Speaker 1: But just be like, yeah, so what, Yeah, the videos

818
00:44:13,840 --> 00:44:15,680
Speaker 1: are interesting here. I have not tried this out on

819
00:44:15,719 --> 00:44:18,359
Speaker 1: my own cat. I'm tempted to. But on the other hand,

820
00:44:18,640 --> 00:44:20,960
Speaker 1: this pattern looks like and this experiment looks like it

821
00:44:21,000 --> 00:44:25,799
Speaker 1: was perhaps created by by Big Printer inc uh to

822
00:44:25,880 --> 00:44:27,640
Speaker 1: get me to blow through my ank a lot faster.

823
00:44:27,719 --> 00:44:30,040
Speaker 1: But still, I I mean, if it enriches the cat

824
00:44:30,200 --> 00:44:32,880
Speaker 1: at all, I'm I'm all for it. But I wonder

825
00:44:32,960 --> 00:44:34,759
Speaker 1: if she, since she's an older cat, she may I

826
00:44:34,800 --> 00:44:36,440
Speaker 1: don't know, she might not be that into it. It

827
00:44:36,440 --> 00:44:40,239
Speaker 1: would be interesting to see. But anyway, these studies, you know,

828
00:44:40,320 --> 00:44:43,560
Speaker 1: they make it clear that Okay, cats do respond to

829
00:44:43,640 --> 00:44:46,239
Speaker 1: at least some of the visual illusions that humans do.

830
00:44:46,320 --> 00:44:49,879
Speaker 1: It seems that, uh, if the results of the new

831
00:44:49,920 --> 00:44:52,680
Speaker 1: study or valid, then then cats do seem to react

832
00:44:52,719 --> 00:44:56,640
Speaker 1: to kinitza contours the illusory squares sort of the same

833
00:44:56,640 --> 00:44:59,160
Speaker 1: way that they react to real squares laid out in

834
00:44:59,200 --> 00:45:02,000
Speaker 1: tape on the floor, and that they do seem to react,

835
00:45:02,200 --> 00:45:04,840
Speaker 1: at least in some cases to these, uh, these static

836
00:45:04,920 --> 00:45:07,360
Speaker 1: discs as if they are snakes moving around on the

837
00:45:07,400 --> 00:45:10,799
Speaker 1: page that must be squatted and tortured, as is a

838
00:45:10,840 --> 00:45:14,200
Speaker 1: cat's noble duty. Uh. It just one more side note

839
00:45:14,239 --> 00:45:16,680
Speaker 1: because before I leave this topic, I came across this

840
00:45:16,719 --> 00:45:21,400
Speaker 1: as well, the question do fish perceive illusory motion? Uh?

841
00:45:21,560 --> 00:45:24,400
Speaker 1: There was a study published in Nature Scientific Reports in

842
00:45:24,840 --> 00:45:28,560
Speaker 1: fourteen by gory at All that looked into okay, do

843
00:45:28,680 --> 00:45:31,520
Speaker 1: fish fall for the rotating snakes illusion? And they used

844
00:45:31,560 --> 00:45:35,520
Speaker 1: a conditioning task where we're fish were supposed to respond

845
00:45:35,560 --> 00:45:38,080
Speaker 1: to motion by doing a certain thing, and then when

846
00:45:38,120 --> 00:45:40,920
Speaker 1: they when you sub in the rotating snakes, do they

847
00:45:40,920 --> 00:45:42,920
Speaker 1: fall for it? And it looks like sometimes they do.

848
00:45:43,680 --> 00:45:47,279
Speaker 1: So even fish perceives some of the same visual illusions

849
00:45:47,320 --> 00:45:51,640
Speaker 1: that humans do. Interesting. Yeah, when it comes to cats

850
00:45:51,760 --> 00:45:53,719
Speaker 1: and the illusion of a box. The only other thing

851
00:45:53,760 --> 00:45:56,440
Speaker 1: that's coming to mind, and again this is something that

852
00:45:56,560 --> 00:46:00,640
Speaker 1: is a product of their their unnatural habitats inside of

853
00:46:00,680 --> 00:46:03,520
Speaker 1: a human house, is that if you have light coming

854
00:46:03,520 --> 00:46:07,000
Speaker 1: through a window, it may you know, it may take

855
00:46:07,040 --> 00:46:11,640
Speaker 1: on um, you know, a square, rectangular or vaguely rectangular

856
00:46:11,680 --> 00:46:15,279
Speaker 1: form on a bed or the floor, and then they

857
00:46:15,480 --> 00:46:17,399
Speaker 1: know are gonna be drawn to it. But of course

858
00:46:17,400 --> 00:46:21,600
Speaker 1: there's a thermal payoff for for for taking a nap

859
00:46:21,680 --> 00:46:24,680
Speaker 1: in that square. Uh. And obviously that's not going to

860
00:46:24,760 --> 00:46:27,200
Speaker 1: be the case if you just outline a square with

861
00:46:27,280 --> 00:46:30,399
Speaker 1: tape or have one of these illusory squares created with

862
00:46:30,440 --> 00:46:33,759
Speaker 1: these pac men. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a really good point.

863
00:46:33,840 --> 00:46:35,880
Speaker 1: And I was thinking about the same thing. I was thinking.

864
00:46:36,960 --> 00:46:40,719
Speaker 1: Are our cats um drawn to squares because of some

865
00:46:40,840 --> 00:46:44,800
Speaker 1: kind of evolved adapted behavior or because of a conditioned

866
00:46:44,880 --> 00:46:48,800
Speaker 1: behavior that is very common within with living in human houses?

867
00:46:48,880 --> 00:46:51,560
Speaker 1: You know, is there something about living in human houses

868
00:46:51,640 --> 00:46:54,760
Speaker 1: that overtime teaches cats that when there's a square shaped

869
00:46:54,800 --> 00:46:56,839
Speaker 1: thing on the floor, I should go sit on that.

870
00:46:56,960 --> 00:46:59,479
Speaker 1: Or is this something you would see, say wildcat's doing

871
00:46:59,480 --> 00:47:01,960
Speaker 1: when present it with the opportunity, right, I mean, it

872
00:47:01,960 --> 00:47:04,920
Speaker 1: seems like like the wild version of this would be uh,

873
00:47:05,000 --> 00:47:08,200
Speaker 1: sunlight that is filtered through a tree canopy. So but

874
00:47:08,239 --> 00:47:10,560
Speaker 1: I mean be square shaped. Yeah, it wouldn't be square shaped.

875
00:47:10,600 --> 00:47:12,799
Speaker 1: So it seems like that. I mean, I could be wrong,

876
00:47:12,800 --> 00:47:15,759
Speaker 1: but it seems like that would would certainly overpower any

877
00:47:15,840 --> 00:47:20,680
Speaker 1: cubicle or rectangular thinking that might emerge during their they're

878
00:47:20,880 --> 00:47:24,800
Speaker 1: they're they're ultimately brief air of captivity. Yeah, I would

879
00:47:24,800 --> 00:47:27,400
Speaker 1: not be surprised if somebody was actually able to identify

880
00:47:27,440 --> 00:47:30,160
Speaker 1: a way in which, like domestic cats that live in

881
00:47:30,280 --> 00:47:33,680
Speaker 1: human houses are more likely to sit on squares. I

882
00:47:33,719 --> 00:47:35,759
Speaker 1: don't know exactly what the reason would be. I think

883
00:47:35,800 --> 00:47:37,839
Speaker 1: the light through the windows of very good guess, but

884
00:47:38,160 --> 00:47:41,360
Speaker 1: something like that that they're used to seeking out and

885
00:47:41,400 --> 00:47:44,400
Speaker 1: getting a reward for seeking out that's roughly square shaped

886
00:47:44,400 --> 00:47:48,160
Speaker 1: on the floor. Now, if we're thinking about thermal differences,

887
00:47:48,200 --> 00:47:52,000
Speaker 1: I guess it is also worth thinking about if you have,

888
00:47:52,400 --> 00:47:55,080
Speaker 1: say you have a shipment come in, um, you know,

889
00:47:55,120 --> 00:47:58,040
Speaker 1: it's you know, some sort of like Amazon box or whatever,

890
00:47:58,560 --> 00:48:01,080
Speaker 1: and you bring that in the house. If it's uh,

891
00:48:01,280 --> 00:48:03,960
Speaker 1: if it's if it's hot outside, if that box has

892
00:48:04,000 --> 00:48:06,800
Speaker 1: been setting in a delivery vehicle, then there's probably a

893
00:48:06,840 --> 00:48:09,719
Speaker 1: thermal difference in that box too. Oh interesting, Yeah, the

894
00:48:09,800 --> 00:48:13,959
Speaker 1: fresh boxes even warmer. But then again, the reverse would

895
00:48:13,960 --> 00:48:15,759
Speaker 1: be true, right if it's been on a box. If

896
00:48:15,760 --> 00:48:17,799
Speaker 1: that box has been setting, uh, you know, in a

897
00:48:17,880 --> 00:48:20,680
Speaker 1: delivery vehicle all day or for a couple of days

898
00:48:20,680 --> 00:48:22,839
Speaker 1: and it's cold out, then it seems like there would

899
00:48:22,880 --> 00:48:25,759
Speaker 1: be an unattractive thermal difference in that box. So do

900
00:48:25,840 --> 00:48:28,000
Speaker 1: cats get in the box faster in the summer or

901
00:48:28,120 --> 00:48:31,399
Speaker 1: does it not make a difference. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. Alright, Well,

902
00:48:31,400 --> 00:48:33,279
Speaker 1: maybe we're just gonna have to call it there for

903
00:48:33,400 --> 00:48:36,600
Speaker 1: part one. Part one will be about about cats seeking

904
00:48:36,600 --> 00:48:39,040
Speaker 1: out these box and square shaped enclosures, and then we're

905
00:48:39,080 --> 00:48:41,680
Speaker 1: gonna come back in part two and talk about humans.

906
00:48:42,040 --> 00:48:44,279
Speaker 1: Yeah sounds good. It should should be fun because, um,

907
00:48:45,080 --> 00:48:47,759
Speaker 1: I think if we if we're fair, there are a

908
00:48:47,800 --> 00:48:52,520
Speaker 1: lot of situations where humans have and continue uh to

909
00:48:52,880 --> 00:48:57,600
Speaker 1: draw towards enclosure enclosures, you know, small spaces in the

910
00:48:57,600 --> 00:49:00,400
Speaker 1: comfort of small spaces, and so it Yeah, it'll be

911
00:49:00,400 --> 00:49:03,520
Speaker 1: interesting to go from the realm of cats uh sitting

912
00:49:03,520 --> 00:49:07,000
Speaker 1: and fitting in boxes to humans doing something along the

913
00:49:07,040 --> 00:49:12,160
Speaker 1: same lines. It fits. Therefore, I am yeah all right.

914
00:49:12,239 --> 00:49:13,680
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you want to check out other

915
00:49:13,680 --> 00:49:15,480
Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you know where

916
00:49:15,520 --> 00:49:17,160
Speaker 1: to find them. Go find the Stuff to Blow your

917
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Speaker 1: Mind podcast feed and you can get that wherever you

918
00:49:20,080 --> 00:49:22,440
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Speaker 1: asking you rate, review and subscribe. You can always go

920
00:49:25,719 --> 00:49:27,120
Speaker 1: to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com and that

921
00:49:27,120 --> 00:49:29,000
Speaker 1: will shoot you over to the I Heart listing for

922
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Speaker 1: this page and if you're interested, we haven't been promoting

923
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Speaker 1: it enough recently, but there's a store on there. You

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Speaker 1: can go there. Uh you can click on that link

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Speaker 1: that out if you're interested. Huge thanks as always to

928
00:49:43,880 --> 00:49:47,480
Speaker 1: our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would

929
00:49:47,520 --> 00:49:49,400
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930
00:49:49,440 --> 00:49:51,600
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00:49:53,800 --> 00:50:04,360
Speaker 1: us at contact that Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

933
00:50:04,440 --> 00:50:06,960
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934
00:50:07,320 --> 00:50:09,320
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