A new paper has been published stating that cats are (almost) liquid
Cats have very flexible bodies and are covered with long hair, which makes them appear larger than their actual size, so they are
Cats are (almost) liquid!—Cats selectively rely on body size awareness when negotiating short openings: iScience
https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(24)02024-8
Yes, cats are liquids—but only in one dimension | Science | AAAS
https://www.science.org/content/article/yes-cats-are-liquids-only-one-dimension
At-home experiments shed light on cats' liquid behavior
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/home-experiments-cats-liquid-behavior
Peter Pongrácz, an animal behaviorist at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary, published a paper examining the flexibility of cats' bodies.
Pongratz has previously conducted similar experiments with dogs, and found that dogs 'slow down and hesitate before passing through an uncomfortably narrow gap.' This shows that dogs are aware of their own body size. So what about cats? This is what prompted the researchers to start their research.
However, cats tend to be introverted and feel stressed in unfamiliar environments such as laboratories, so it is 'difficult' to study cat behavior in a laboratory like dogs, Pongrátz explains. So, with the help of his colleagues, Pongrátz created a mobile experimental facility and, with the cooperation of 29 cat owners living in Budapest, investigated the behavior of their cats in their homes.
The experimental equipment created by Pongratz and his colleagues consists of two boards with 'an opening that gradually narrows at a constant height' (A) and 'an opening that is constant in width but gradually decreases in height' (B). Each board has five openings, and by installing these in a door frame, it is possible to investigate which openings a cat can get through.
In the experiment, the experimenter stood on the same side as the subject cat (A), and the cat's owner stood on the other side of the board (O). During the experiment, the cat's behavior was recorded by a camera.
In the experiment, the owner would grab the cat once it had passed through the opening, then hand it over to the researcher to see if it could pass through another opening. However, some cats don't like to be touched, so 'some cats tried to escape from their owners' hands no matter what,' Pongratz said.
Thirty-eight cats participated in the experiment, and only 30 of them were able to complete the experiment. As a result of the experiment, cats tried to pass through 'openings that gradually narrow at a constant height' without hesitation, regardless of whether they could pass through or not, but stopped when the height of 'openings that have a constant width and gradually decrease in height' became lower than a certain level. Specifically, 22 of the 30 cats hesitated to pass through 'low holes with a constant width', but only 8 cats stopped in front of 'narrow gaps with a constant height'. In addition, cats can pass through narrow gaps that are only about half the width of their body without stopping, and Pongratz said about this, 'Cats do not use their physical senses, they are like liquids.'
Pongratz said that the reason cats hesitate to go through low holes is that 'in nature, it may be a survival strategy to bend down and go through a low hole. This is because going through a hole without being able to see the other side of the hole may leave them vulnerable to potential threats.
The fact that cats will stop in front of a low hole of a consistent width, even in the safety of their own home, suggests that they rely on imagining their own body size when planning their approach.
Pongratz's experiment was described as 'simple and elegant,' by aerospace engineer Sridhar Ravi of the University of New South Wales in Australia. The findings suggest that cats are aware of their own body size and may form an image of themselves in their minds.
Ivan Khvatov, a psychologist at the Moscow Institute of Psychoanalysis, speculated that while dogs have low flexibility and therefore have to stop and think before passing through a narrow hole, cats' high flexibility means they only take size into account in certain situations.
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