Cats track their owner’s location through sound, reveals study

Gulf Today, Staff Reporter

A new Japanese study found that cats have the ability to track their owner location using audio signals.

Saho Takagi, the first author of the study and a doctorate student at Kyoto, Japan, told CNN that cats have sensitive ears which they can move in different directions.

She added, “I saw a cat leaning its ears to hear a sound on its left, so, I decided to study whether they have abilities to locate their owner through sounds.”

Takagi indicated that cats were generally believed to be not interested in their owners, but they turned out to be an unseen mental representation of their owners.

The study conducted in a home environment and at a cafe for cats, found how cats interact with their owners without visual signals using sound amplifiers through which the cats owners uttered their names. In places where the researchers conducted the study, sound amplifiers were installed away from each other and away from cats, to find how cats will respond to sounds.

Another group of cats was classified as surprised, based on specific behaviours such as ear and head movements.

Researchers found that cats were surprised when their owners started to move from one place to another.

They said that cats had spatial social awareness, meaning they can mentally imagine the presence of others through signals such as sound.