Apparently, some animal behavior scientists now understand the origins of the phrase "herding cats." http://t.co/57lzObX39m
— billmon (@billmon1) April 23, 2014
As those of us who live with cats can attest, it’s not impossible, just more complicated. David Grimm, in the Slate article:
… Miklósi, I was surprised to learn, had also conducted the pointing test with felines. Like Agrillo, he had a hard time getting cats to cooperate in his laboratory—so he went to their homes instead. Even then, most of the animals weren’t interested in advancing science; according to Miklósi’s research paper, seven of the initial 26 test subjects “dropped out.” But those that did participate performed nearly as well as dogs had. Cats too, it appears, may have a rudimentary theory of mind.
But when Miklósi took the study a step further, he spotted an intriguing difference between cats and dogs. This time, he and his colleagues created two puzzles: one solvable, the other impossible. In the solvable puzzle, the researchers placed food in a bowl and stuck it under a stool. Dogs and cats had to find the bowl and pull it out to eat. Both aced the test. Then the scientist rigged the exam. They again placed the bowl under a stool, but this time they tied it to the stool legs so that it could not be pulled out. The dogs pawed at the bowl for a few seconds and then gave up, gazing up at their owners as if asking for help. The cats, on the other hand, rarely looked at their owners; they just kept trying to get the food.
Now before you conclude that cats are dumber than dogs because they’re not smart enough to realize when a task is impossible, consider this: Dogs have lived with us for as many as 30,000 years—20,000 years longer than cats. More than any other animal on the planet, dogs are tuned in to the “human radio frequency”— the broadcast of our feelings and desires. Indeed, we may be the only station dogs listen to. Cats, on the other hand, can tune us in if they want to (that’s why they pass the pointing test as well as dogs), but they don’t hang on our every word like dogs do. They’re surfing other channels on the dial. And that’s ultimately what makes them so hard to study…
***********
Apart from being grateful to our furry companions — how much closer are contemporary sf fans liable to get to communicating with an alien intelligence? — what’s on the agenda for the day?
K488
The cats were quietly cursing their “owners” under their breath. Look for help, indeed! Not in this lifetime.
Villago Delenda Est
Well, there’s trying to communicate with wingtards, but that that’s not an “alien intelligence”. More like an “alien stupidity”.
OzarkHillbilly
@Villago Delenda Est: Beat me to it.
raven
On the 100th Anniversary of Wrigley field it is important to recognize ne of the great injustices of sport is that Harry Caray overshadows Jack Brickhouse as the premier Cub announcer.
raven
Jack and Ernie.
Schlemizel
@raven:
Funniest story I heard about Harry. There were rumors in the papers that Mr. Caray was seeing one Mrs. August Busch in secret. The day after those rumors made the rounds Harry had an accident, he was hit by a car in the parking lot at the Cardinals stadium. The car just happened to be Mr. Busch’s limo. Funny coincidence isn’t it.
To your sadness it was the next season he became voice of the Cubs.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: The greater injustice is the lights. Now Cub fans just have to work thru the day like the rest of us. When I was a kid, my old man, a die hard Cub fan, took my brother and I to a couple games at Wrigley when visiting family. In my memories, the place was absolutely magical. Of course, at 10 years old, so was hanging out in the local watering hole with my Uncle Ted. Mysteries and magic…
raven
@Schlemizel: Yea, he was quite a character and I realize he came on board as the Superstation hit it’s groove but Jack was there twice as long.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: My ex’s sister lived across the street right behind the scoreboard in the 70’s. Fucking organ drove her nuts!
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: I wonder if you were at Ted’s?
Poopyman
@Schlemizel: “Take me out…” THUD.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: It’s called Murphy’s now but it was Ted’s for many years.
MomSense
Watching FUX n Friends this morning. Some poor English professor at Eastern Connecticut State University was recorded making comments about Republicans and they are upset that the university isn’t doing anything about it! Hasselbeck wonders how this is possible?
Professor apologized but they are not satisfied with this. The student was on Megyn Kelly’s show last night. They are spending a lot of time on this. Ukraine got 3 seconds or so.
The poor students should be able to get an education without political indoctrination. I think we are going to learn about a determined brewer who is dealing with big eebil gubmint regulations.
Schlemizel
@raven: I never heard Jack so I have no comparison. With the Twins f my youth it was Halsey Hall doing color that was so ‘colorful’ He is reported to have said late in a game “I have been watching a young couple during the game. They kiss after every pitch, he kisses her on the strikes and she kisses him on the balls.”. I assume Harry was the model for the guy in “Major League, bottle of JD and all.
@Poopyman: WIN! Yeah, he got taken out at the old ball game
bemused
The cat’s brilliant green eyes in pic are mesmerizing and Inscrutable. As I gazed into them, Leslie Gore’s song, “You Don’t Own Me” started playing in my head.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: My old man’s family was from Joliet. The place was as hard scrabble a rust belt town as they got. Haven’t been there in about 20 years. He was the last of ten children. The best part of family visits was always the round table reminisces of the Depression, stories like hanging out on the fence in back and smelling the scent of fresh from the oven pastries wafting down the alley, things they could only dream of eating. My old man used to hide his lunch at school because his sandwiches were always made with home made bread and all the other kids had store bought bread. Soup was a mainstay but because it was rare Grandma could afford more than a bone from the butcher. Etc etc.
sm*t cl*de
The cat’s brilliant green eyes in pic are mesmerizing and Inscrutable
ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOCAT
JPL
@MomSense: Fox news is talking about political indoctrination, how very odd.
sm*t cl*de
From Slate:
I got entire books here of current research in cat cognition, so I have to suspect that Slate reporter is so full of shit his eyes have turned brown.
skwerlhugger
Oh my, a softball. Homo Sapiens exceptionalism. When weighted by their lifecycle and learning opportunities, squirrels are superior to dogs or cats. I’d argue in absolute terms also, but gave up trying to convince anyone else long ago because humans judge only things they value. Squirrels have social and familial lives more complex than either dogs or cats, learn tasks they value much faster than dogs or cats (how do you quickly open a new nut type? How do you get to that food source?), have superb perceptual and motor skills, have personalities easily as individual as any dog or cat I’ve met, are as playful (mostly when young) as any dog or cat, and have stunningly attractive tails. Most squirrels are smarter about crossing a road than most dogs; they get killed more because they do it more. I think natural selection is improving their skills during my lifetime, but not certain. So now a squirrel hunter will chime in and boast of how many squirrels they kill, thus cementing the point that the one-trick-pony of human intelligence is a very overrated evolutionary trait.
Randy P
My cat would probably sit by the stool, wait for me to walk nearby and then swipe my leg with a claw. Gently the first time. Less so if I continued to ignore the message: “Hey stupid, there’s a problem here with my food.”
Patricia Kayden
@MomSense: What happened to the Professor’s freedom of speech rights? I have a feeling that whatever it is he said about Republicans was true and hit a sore spot with Fox News.
Randy P
Kind of on this subject, I’m working my way through a fascinating book Animals Make us Human by autistic animal behaviorist Temple Grandin, who by her own description identifies a lot more closely with animals than with humans. (I heard her say words to that effect in an interview on WHYY’s Fresh Air and yes I am guilty of still listening to PBS).
MomSense
@JPL: @Patricia Kayden:
FUX n Friends are not happy that the university said that professors have freedom to say what they want and they won’t take action. Poor Elizabeth wonders how this is even possible!! The prof said something about Republicans being money grubbing, racist, and misogynist.
Visited CNN too. Wow you can even hear the “down” in their voices. I swear they talk about 2.5 times more slowly than the other morning shows. They aren’t even excited about the possible MH370 door-some metal with rivets that washed ashore but they promise to stay on this new development!
OzarkHillbilly
@Randy P: NPR you mean ;-). That’s OK, I still listen to NPR as well, in spite of the fact that they still interview Republicans, don’t call them liars with every other word they utter, and generally aren’t a Liberal FOX news.
danielx
It’s not that hard.
I don’t get the difficulty with herding cats, you just have to have something they want. They’re kind of like congressmen in that regard. I have found that in the case of cats, ham seems to be the lure of choice. Preferably freshly cooked after dinner leftover ham, but deli ham also has its proponents among the feline population.
Randy P
@OzarkHillbilly: D`oh!
Yes, NPR of course. ‘Round here you’re supposed to hate them, but dammit WHYY has a lot of excellent programming.
danielx
@Patricia Kayden:
They only apply to people that Republicans, and more specifically Fox News, like.
Baud
I read somewhere that this is one of the differences between dogs and wolves.
JPL
@bemused: Betty Cracker needs to read this because she enjoys earworms. Yesterday it was Young Turks. lol
MomSense
@JPL:
Betty’s earworm infected me. It’s a tough one.
time time time time is on your side is on your side is on your side. It’s brutal.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Yes, a wolf would rip the legs right off that stool like a moose in chest deep snow.
Baud
Holy cow! Police in Philly actually arrested rich prep school white boys for dealing drugs.
JPL
@Baud: Don’t worry, their attorneys are already arranging a plea deal. They probably have a medical condition.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Crap it was Ray’s Home of the Bleacher Bums not Ted’s!
1965
Ray’s Bleachers – Home of the Bleacher Bums
In 1965 it became Ray’s Bleachers when Ernie sold to Ray Meyers (hope you’re catching on to how the name changes work.) It soon achieved renown as home of the Bleacher Bums who surfaced during the Cub’s race for the pennant in 1969 & disappeared when the Cubs did in the early 70’s.
Ray sold to Jim Murphy in 1980 and the bar has grown in size and reputation ever since..
Ash Can
@Schlemizel:
There must have been some truth to those rumors if Augie Busch’s wife made the trek all the way up to Comiskey Park. ;)
Villago Delenda Est
@MomSense:
Blurting out a truth about them always upsets Rethuglican scum.
I see Patricia beat me to it…
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: One of them has parents that are “very disappointed” in him. However will the little dears survive the SIS they will get because prison would not be good for them?
Baud
@JPL:
They probably suffered from trust fund envy.
Villago Delenda Est
@JPL: “Advanced Chemical Affluenza”
Villago Delenda Est
@OzarkHillbilly: Prison is too rough for daughter raping DuPonts, you know.
Ash Can
@raven: I remember when the Cubby Bear Lounge was just a little dump of a neighborhood tavern kittycorner across the intersection of Clark and Addison from the main entrance of the ballpark.
And yes, I’ll be celebrating at Wrigley Field today.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: My family was in Villa Park in those days. My their house was marked by the “gentlemen of the road” that rode the rails down the street. They knew she was good for a meal if they had it.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.
bemused
@JPL:
I missed that earworm.
I don’t dislike Camel Walk, Southern Culture, but that one is hard to get out of my head if I hear it which is rare now.
raven
@Ash Can: The Cubby Bear was/is a big music joint, right? Last time we were there we wandered into a place that was all Alabama football!
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: People had to take care of each other in those days. Every one in my grandfather’s neighborhood knew him by the hootch he sold during Prohibition.
danielx
@OzarkHillbilly:
Clearly not just a single occurrence but a cluster of affluenza cases. I predict that high-end detox-and-therapy centers in the area will see an influx of new clients; it’s a well known fact that denizens of the Main Line do not thrive in the Greybar Hotel.
Ash Can
@raven: Yep, it’s a big place now. It used to be just one little storefront on the corner — brick walls, small windows, dark interior, just like all the other corner saloons in the city. Of course, that was back in the days when the neighborhood around Wrigley Field was less than desirable. Nobody even bothered calling it “Wrigleyville” back then.
raven
@Ash Can: Most people not from Chicago don’t know that the Bears played there for 50 years. Mr Halas and Mr Wrigley had an agreement on rent and concessions that lasted 50 years on a handshake, no written contract. Of course George was an Illini!
sm*t cl*de
squirrels are superior to dogs or cats.
Good luck convincing John Cole to switch to skwirls as pets.
Ash Can
@raven: It never made any sense to me that the Bears were playing there and not at a place actually built for football, viz. Soldier Field. Nowadays all’s right with the world.
MomSense
@raven:
During the depression, my grandmother and gr. grandmother fed people, lots of children, every day until they finally lost their farm. I remember one time when I was a kid I asked her what happened to the people who got their only meals from them after they left and she got the saddest, most heartbreaking look on her face and couldn’t answer.
Chyron HR
This must somehow be different from rejecting the elected leader of the United States of America.
raven
@Ash Can: Soldier Field and the LA Coliseum really were not built for football either. Both stadiums were fairly low one-tier setups with nearly 50 yards of seats beyond the end line of the endzone. They put bleachers close to the endlines in both in the 70’s but the seating still sucked. It’s the reason the mistake on the lake holds so fewer than the original configuration. The Illini played Northwestern in Wrigley a couple of years back and my buddies loved it. Unfortunately they laid it out in the opposite direction from the way the Bears did and ended up having to hang the goal post from the wall. They would switch directions so the team that had the ball went the other way but it was a cluster fuck.
rikyrah
Impeaching Nixon (no, not that one)
04/23/14 08:35 AM—Updated 04/23/14 08:55 AM
By Steve Benen
There is no actual competition to see which Republican-led state legislature can govern in the least responsible way possible, but if such a contest existed, Missouri would have to be considered a credible contender.
The indictment against GOP lawmakers’ recent efforts in the Show Me State isn’t short: voting restrictions, nullification efforts, anti-union schemes, anti-evolution measures, an anti-health care push, and on and on.
To be sure, many of these efforts have fallen short, thanks in part to Missouri’s Democratic governor, Jay Nixon. But given Republican extremism, perhaps it shouldn’t come as too big a surprise that Missouri’s GOP lawmakers have responded to the governor’s objections to their agenda by raising the specter of impeachment.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/impeaching-nixon-no-not-one
schrodinger's cat
No one tells the kittehs what to do, they are the original 1%.
JPL
@Villago Delenda Est: I just read a few articles about the case and found this
Scott is 25 and Brooks is 18 so I see some type of he took advantage of me, excuse.
schrodinger's cat
The FP kitteh looks so much like my boss cat!
Frankensteinbeck
Attuned to human signals? I guess that would be somewhere on the list, but the first thing any behavioral researcher would suspect is that dogs have evolved to look to humans for answers. Their brains are hard wired to make that one of their first solutions to a problem, especially since humans usually don’t want dogs to act independently. Cats, at best, have learned through practice that they can get humans to solve their problems.
That’s just the first thing. There’s a whole list, like questions of how high an animal prioritizes a food reward, how long the animal persists with unsolved puzzles in general before giving up, or whether it is better or worse at spatial puzzles than other kinds of learning. ‘Intelligence’ is not a single factor. Every kind of learning is different.
Betty Cracker
@schrodinger’s cat:
I’ve always thought cats were libertarians, which is okay in an animal but insufferable in a human. Chickens seem to have horrible tendencies toward feudalism. I would not want to be one.
rikyrah
she was a crook from the get go.
……………………..
Ex-Fla. LG didn’t report income
Apr. 22, 2014 4:05 PM
Former Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll failed to report thousands of dollars she earned from a veterans charity that was accused of running an illegal gambling operation, newly released documents show.
Carroll abruptly resigned in March 2013 after state investigators questioned the work she did for Allied Veterans of the World before she ran with Gov. Rick Scott. She denied any wrongdoing, but for more than a year there has been no public explanation of why she was initially interviewed by investigators.
Documents obtained by The Associated Press from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement show Carroll’s company was paid nearly $100,000 by Allied Veterans in 2009 and 2010 for her work as a public relations consultant. Most of the money was then transferred to her personal banking account.
http://www.tallahassee.com/viewart/20140422/POLITICSPOLICY/140422013/Ex-Fla-LG-didn-t-report-income-
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: They can be very loving if you are their human, but on their terms not yours.
Betty Cracker
@rikyrah: I figured she was crooked as a dog’s hind leg, just like her former boss! It’s about damn time this came out; she resigned, and there was so little (relatively speaking) reported about why.
I like the timing, though. Scott is already less popular than a genital wart; a big scandal like this could seal his richly-deserved political doom.
Betty Cracker
@schrodinger’s cat: Yeah, I’ve had cats as pets in the past, and you’re right. I haven’t had a pet cat for several years now, but I do like them. Very different from dogs, but great pets in their own way.
jayjaybear
@raven: “Sneed’s Feed & Seed (formerly Chuck’s)”
Snarki, child of Loki
Members of the opposite sex?
Oh wait…sf fans? Never mind.
Culture of Truth
When Tiger wants my help he knows how to get it. Fill the bowl, now; open this window, now; etc. Also if I point he will follow. But yes, if I brought him to a lab he would freak out.
StringOnAStick
@schrodinger’s cat: Excellent essay!
kc
@bemused:
Yes! It wasn’t easy to scroll away from the pic.
I think the cats are studying us.
Mnemosyne
@OzarkHillbilly:
I’ve been told that my grandfather sold pop to the speakeasies in his area. Not liquor or beer, but pop.
The real question is why my grandmother was naive enough to believe this story from him.
schrodinger's cat
@StringOnAStick: Thanks so much!
@Mnemosyne: What is pop? Soda?
WaterGirl
@MomSense: Like spoilers for a movie or tv show, we need some kind of warning on these earworms. I successfully avoided reading any details about the ear worm yesterday because I didn’t want to catch it.
Just when I thought it was safe, you snuck in the words to the earworm. I looked away as quickly as I could, like your hand moves away when you’ve been burned. Alas, I was not quick enough. Curses!
If I can’t shake this song, this might have to go on your permanent record! :-)
Schlemizel
@JPL: Prison would not be advantageous for the poor boy. That was the excuse offered by one judge anyway so there is precedence.
Schlemizel
@schrodinger’s cat:
Soda? you mean the stuff you bake biscuits with?
WaterGirl
@schrodinger’s cat: Yes, pop is soda. We just had this discussion at Easter. I grew up in Chicago, where it was always called soda, which was shortened from “soda pop”. My sister calls it pop because that’s what they call it in Michigan.
schrodinger's cat
@Schlemizel: Yes, they both do have the bicarbonate of sodium!
bemused
@kc:
I know they do, diabolical darlings.
schrodinger's cat
@bemused: I for one, welcome my kitteh overlords.
bemused
@schrodinger’s cat:
Absolutely.
kindness
My critters are all blowing their winter coats. I could make sweaters if only I wanted a sweater that smelled really bad when it got wet.
Gindy51
My deaf dog Dany, a true chow hound, would knock over the stool and spill the food to get it, no help from me needed. Loki would walk away and only Mouse, the mix, would look at me with doe eyes pleaded for help to get the food.
As for UFO’s, my husband got an email from the FAA in regards to a seminar they are giving for spotting and reporting UFOs. Weird.
https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/ATpubs/ATC/atc0908.html
Central Planning
What exactly is that HRF? I want to get one of my nerdy kids to build a HRF receiver.
My cat follows me around the yard when I go outside. Perhaps it’s more of a passive herding – she is really herding me from behind.
And this:
Does that mean cats are more persistent, not dumb? Or what if there were three steps that had to be figured out to get the food. Would both dogs and cats figure it out? An all-or-nothing approach seems like it won’t give the best understanding.
And no, I have not read TFA yet.
Sondra
I’d like to invite that researcher to my home to study my cat Iszee. He never looks to us for leadership because he is in charge. When I am downstairs and my husband is upstairs, Iszee will bark at me, chase me, whine at me and do whatever it takes to get me to go upstairs.
What he wants is for all of us to be in the bedroom watching the teevee TOGETHER. It’s easier to keep track of us when we are in the same room.
He knows when the car pulls into the driveway and runs downstairs to greet us at the door. He comes when he is called: unless he’s hiding and that’s how he got his name. It’s short for “where is he?”
He will stand in front of the refridgerator until you put an ice cube in his water bowl and he would keep trying to get at that food until he chewed through the legs of the stool if he had to.
mellowjohn
re: all the wrigley worship…
LET’S GO, WHITE SOX!
JimV
You guys/ladies (BJ posters) are great.
That is all.
WaterGirl
@Sondra: I love your story!
chrome agnomen
make no mistake about it: cats are much dumber than dogs.
lethargytartare
@WaterGirl:
where and when in Chicago did you grow up? I grew up in Waukegan, and until I went to school downstate, all I ever heard was pop.
Soda’s up here had ice cream in ’em.
RSA
@Baud:
Yes. Some time ago I read about an experiment with puppies and wolf pups, both of whom like to be in a warm human lap; puppies will tend to initiate eye contact first, while wolf pups will just go for it. I don’t remember whether the experimenters had a condition in which the human’s eyes were covered (this is common in theory of mind experiments with animals), but that might have interesting, too.
Miklósi, the animal cognition scientist, has done the inaccessible food experiment with wolves and dogs as well. A description can be found in a Scientific American blog post, with pointers to the research papers. (The part at the end of the post about dogs using human beings as tools is nonsense, though.)
Mnemosyne
@WaterGirl:
I was about to ask the same question as lethargytartare, because I grew up on the North Shore and it was always called “pop.” Same for my husband, who’s from Oak Park. Maybe you had a strange East Coast family who imported their bizarre folkways to Chicago?
@lethargytartare:
Finally, someone I can ask this question of — do you remember getting pop from Glen Rock? And when did they go away? My parents always used to buy a few cases for parties and we were allowed to go along and pick out the bottles we wanted.
lethargytartare
@Mnemosyne:
Absolutely – Glen Rock Pop was a staple at any cookout, block party, or kids sporting event. We loved getting to make our own mix-n-match cases.
I’m not sure when it went out of business… The building is still there and my last memory is that it was still open and doing something, just not sure what.
Maybe I’ll drive by there on my way home tonight…