Now we know why cats never get bored of chasing string. A new study has found that domestic felines don鈥檛 seem to understand cause and effect connections between objects.
Chimpanzees, tamarin monkeys, parrots and ravens all understand that tugging on one end of a string will bring a treat at the other end closer. Pigeons and human infants don鈥檛; and cat lovers dismayed at their pets鈥� lack of nous can console themselves with the knowledge that dogs don鈥檛 either.
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鈥淭here鈥檚 no reason to think that cats are more stupid than dogs,鈥� says , a comparative psychologist at Canterbury Christ Church University, UK, who led the study. 鈥淚鈥檝e done quite a few tests and I always find that dogs just don鈥檛 get it.鈥�
Working with 15 shelter cats, Osthaus鈥檚 team attached fish or biscuit treats to one end of a string. A plastic screen with a small gap at the bottom separated cats from their reward, requiring the felines to tug on the string to get the treat.
With a single string attached to the food, most cats learned to paw at the string to get a snack. But when Osthaus鈥� team introduced a second piece of string, unconnected to any foods, cats tugged on the correct string less than half the time.
This suggests that the cats couldn鈥檛 infer cause-and-effect relationships between two objects and could only learn an association from scratch each time.
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