[HN Gopher] If I fits I sits: illusory contour susceptibility in...
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If I fits I sits: illusory contour susceptibility in domestic cats
Author : Hooke
Score : 206 points
Date : 2021-05-08 14:35 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sciencedirect.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sciencedirect.com)
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Is this related to cat circles?
| fortyrod wrote:
| tl;dr for non cat owners: "Cat Traps Are Real". If you own a cat,
| move along. There is nothing to see that you haven't already.
| chowells wrote:
| The paper starts with "cats have been observed to do this
| thing, which we will take advantage of for an experiment on how
| cats perceive the world."
|
| The actual test is whether cats perceive a certain type of
| visual illusion. The test is whether cats will sit inside such
| an illusory shape in the same way they do non-illusory shapes.
| The result is that they do, indicating that cats process visual
| stimuli in a way at least somewhat similar to humans.
|
| tl;dr You should at least read the whole abstract before
| assuming you understand it.
| fortyrod wrote:
| It's great that you have my browser history and can tell what
| I looked at. Or didn't look at. I think you could make a lot
| of $ at Facebook.
| slver wrote:
| You have misunderstood the meaning of basic text twice in a
| row.
| ryanianian wrote:
| That is shockingly rude and snarky of you to say.
| fortyrod wrote:
| Compared to this? "You should at least read the whole
| abstract before assuming you understand it." I can do the
| math for you, but it would be great if you could pitch
| right on in there yourself.
| SilasX wrote:
| Nice, they got volunteers to print out patterns and use them to
| see if/how often their cats sat in them. Great use of cat owners!
| And, also, probably a shoe-in for the Ig Nobel awards :-p
| fortyrod wrote:
| Cat owners are used to being used.
| supernova87a wrote:
| I would be surprised if cats _didn 't_ do this, perceiving
| optical illusions just like we do. It's the sign of an advanced
| inference capable visual system. Otherwise, how could they be on
| alert for dangerous cucumbers in their territory for our
| amusement?
| erulabs wrote:
| It's generally accepted that cats were useful for early humans
| because we hoarded grain, and so the cats were anti-rat
| machines. The anti-snake traits of kitties may be an older and
| just-as-useful reason we tolerated (and loved) cats than just
| protecting grain storage.
| snickell wrote:
| Curiously, I have a cat Brownie who grew up feral in the high
| sierras and appears to have subsisted on snakes as food/prey.
| They're still his favorite prey.
|
| Instead of startling, Brownie the mighty snake hunter reacts
| to cucumbers as: FAVORITE FOOD.
|
| He gets a cucumber almost every day. He hunts the cucumbers,
| drags them to his lair, and consumes them leaving only a
| small trail of seed viscera behind in his cave.
|
| He's been doing this before I knew about cucumbers scaring
| cats on internet, and I think lends credence to the
| hypothesis that cucumbers trigger a "snake recognition
| circuit": a cat raised to see snakes as food rather (vs the
| inborn threat response) reacts to cucumbers as food!
| akiselev wrote:
| That cats have a natural snake recognition circuit is news
| to me. Several more anecdotes:
|
| A feral cat that gave birth in a family member's garage in
| east San Diego (not the sierras but mountainous at ~3k ft
| elevation) found a rattle snake on their property one time.
| I had to scare her away several times while running around
| looking for a bucket and some long sticks because she did
| not recognize the danger at all. It looked more like she
| was approaching a strange new male cat that was about to
| court her than a venomous snake
|
| Regarding the cucumbers: another family member had a cat in
| Europe in a village around 56degN - which is near the upper
| limit for snakes, so he's unlikely to have ever seen any,
| let alone eaten one - and the cat _loved_ cucumbers. They
| had a greenhouse and had to be extremely vigilant after
| picking cucumbers because the second they 'd turn their
| backs the cat would proceed to take nibbles out of every
| single one of them in turn, even if he was given one of his
| own. I think your cat just likes cucumbers.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| That's a cool story. Props to Brownie, but I hope he's fast
| enough to avoid being bitten by the few poisonous ones in
| the US.
|
| In Africa, most of the storks ate snakes; including really
| deadly ones. They would stomp them to death. That would
| probably not work on pit vipers.
| dboat wrote:
| I don't think there are any poisonous cucumbers in the
| us, his cat should be fine.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I dunno. When I was a kid, they would freak me out...
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Has anyone worked out how cats react to vampire
| watermelons in Romania?
| marsven_422 wrote:
| Brains are not computers running algorithms.
| euroderf wrote:
| We "hoarded" grain because we transitioned from hunter-
| gatherers to an agro lifestyle in order to brew beer from
| that grain, so cats and beer are natural allies.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| Ships and distilleries also used cats to keep rodents at
| bay. The Glenturret distillery in Scotland even
| commissioned a statue of their cat Towser after her
| passing.
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2014/09/09/347093135
| /...
| dylan604 wrote:
| I like your position that alcohol was the reason we
| switched to agrarian lifestyles.
| sevencolors wrote:
| Indeed mine have anti-snake protection capabilities that also
| cover items such as nailfiles, pens, and plastic toy springs
| SwiftyBug wrote:
| My cat's anti-snake protection manifests as an extreme
| hatred of earphone wires
| dylan604 wrote:
| Lucky for your cat, headphones no longer need wires. In
| fact, I think Apple should include that in their
| marketing. "Not only have we reduced our packaging, we've
| also stop scaring your cats!"
| mhh__ wrote:
| Now your dog can eat the whole thing in one go!
| fortyrod wrote:
| Ya, have a cat who took on 2 copperheads at once with great
| delight. I won't say I rescued him but I did get him out of
| there with some blood loss (mine). Maybe a study on the cat -
| mongoose correlation?
| agency wrote:
| I'm very sad I can't view the figures, which appear to include at
| least a couple of shots of cats sitting in things. It looks like
| the Kanizsa square illusion they're referring to is this:
| https://puzzlewocky.com/optical-illusions/kanizsa-square-and...
| vitus wrote:
| Ars Technica has the pictures from the paper:
|
| https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/what-cats-love-of-bo...
|
| But, also, I was able to find a PDF download through Google
| Scholar (https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=95559247038
| 477495...) -- for whatever reason the HTML link provides me
| with a "Download PDF" link even when in incognito.
| est31 wrote:
| > for whatever reason the HTML link provides me with a
| "Download PDF" link even when in incognito.
|
| That means that you likely use university/college internet
| and your institution has purchased institution access. This
| access is usually implemented in the form that everyone from
| the institution's network can download the paper, without
| having to log in at the publisher's website or anything.
| Basically an ip based whitelist.
| vitus wrote:
| I could believe that, if I were living on a college campus.
| But no, I'm using a residential ISP, and every geoip site
| I've checked in the past agrees re: my ISP.
|
| I recall in the past when I was on a university connection,
| I was also greeted by some sort of affiliate banner
| indicating that I was getting access through the
| university.
| isatty wrote:
| While I appreciate the article (it's not on scihub) - why is
| Ars such garbage now that either it autoplays something with
| sound or permits such ads?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Probably has something to do with being owned by Conde Nast
| rsj_hn wrote:
| All the cats I had immediately sit on any new item brought into
| the house, so there may be some confounding variables.
| guenthert wrote:
| Obfuscated Javascript didn't render here (Chromebook), found what
| looked like the abstract:
|
| "A well-known phenomenon to cat owners is the tendency of their
| cats to sit in enclosed spaces such as boxes, laundry baskets,
| and even shape outlines taped on the floor. This investigative
| study asks whether domestic cats (<em>Felis silvestris
| catus</em>) are also susceptible to sitting in enclosures that
| are illusory in nature, utilizing cats' attraction to box-like
| spaces to assess their perception of the Kanizsa square visual
| illusion. Carried out during the COVID-19 pandemic, this study
| randomly assigned citizen science participants Booklets of six
| randomized, counterbalanced daily stimuli to print out, prepare,
| and place on the floor in pairs. Owners observed and
| videorecorded their cats' behavior with the stimuli and reported
| findings from home over the course of the six daily trials. This
| study ultimately reached over 500 pet cats and cat owners, and of
| those, 30 completed all of the study's trials. Of these, nine cat
| subjects selected at least one stimulus by sitting within the
| contours (illusory or otherwise) with all limbs for at least
| three seconds. This study revealed that cats selected the Kanizsa
| illusion just as often as the square and more often than the
| control, indicating that domestic cats may treat the subjective
| Kanizsa contours as they do real contours. Given the drawbacks of
| citizen science projects such as participant attrition, future
| research would benefit from replicating this study in controlled
| settings. To the best of our knowledge, this investigation is the
| first of its kind in three regards: a citizen science study of
| cat cognition; a formal examination into cats' attraction to 2D
| rather than 3D enclosures; and study into cats' susceptibility to
| illusory contours in an ecologically relevant paradigm. This
| study demonstrates the potential of more ecologically valid study
| of pet cats, and more broadly provides an interesting new
| perspective into cat visual perception research."
|
| Thought that might be of interest to other who, like me, couldn't
| grok the headline.
| dvh wrote:
| I predict that in the future, 90% of HN comments will be about
| how to read the damn article.
| Datenstrom wrote:
| Was going to post the real link but unfortunately looks like it
| isn't on scihub yet.
| softblush wrote:
| New articles are on pause currently
| cpach wrote:
| Do you know why?
| rand0mx1 wrote:
| due to some suit in Indian High court
| sleavey wrote:
| Why does Sci-Hub care about the Indian High court?
| joshuaissac wrote:
| Because Sci-Hub is defending this case in court (unlike
| in some other cases where they ignored proceedings), so
| ignoring the court order to pause adding new papers would
| hurt their chances of winning.
| sleavey wrote:
| Interesting. I figured they would continue not to engage
| with any governments. Do you know why they chose to take
| part in this court case?
| unmole wrote:
| Possibly because Indian courts previously ruled that
| making photocopies of textbooks for educational purposes
| is _fair use_ under copyright law:
| https://selvams.com/blog/breakthrough-indian-copyright-
| law/
| captn3m0 wrote:
| Sci-Hub is defending itself in the Indian High Court, and
| the case is still being heard. The court asked it to stop
| uploading new materials in the interim[0], and they seem
| to be honoring it to avoid contempt of court I guess.
|
| [0]: https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/delhi-hc-
| asks-libg...
| Datenstrom wrote:
| Thanks, I had no idea. I hope the case ends in favor of them,
| it has been an invaluable resource for me since I left
| University.
|
| Does anyone know if there is a way to support them?
| [deleted]
| etiam wrote:
| Surely this will get at least a nomination for the IgNobel
| awards?
|
| Quirky study, but in the best sense of it.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I'm flabergasted that they recevie so few completed studies. I
| thought asking people to take pictures of their cat would be
| like "duh, I do that anyways" level of easy.
| podiki wrote:
| Coverage on Ars: https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/what-
| cats-love-of-bo... (and posted on HN:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27069741)
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