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Cat Is Listening to You

Felines may be able to learn human words.

In the clip, a cartoon of a smiling red sun, complete with eyebrows, shrank and expanded into view, accompanied by the word keraru spoken loud and clear by the cat’s owner. A behavioral scientist researching animal cognition at Azabu University in Japan, Takagi is convinced that domestic cats are adapting to life with their human companions in surprising ways. The results from her study, published recently in Scientific Reports, also show a difference in attention that cats pay to the videos depending on whether the accompanying words are narrated by their human owners, or produced electronically.

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