![]() There is evidence that they also display specific facial actions during negative emotional contexts with humans compared to the same emotional contexts without human interaction 28, 29. Cats have also been shown to attract and manipulate human attention effectively in the auditory modality, through solicitation purring 26, as well as discriminate their name from other words, even when unfamiliar humans are calling 27. In addition, domestic cats have been shown to perform equally as well as dogs in object choice tasks using human pointing 25, and only slightly worse than dogs in tasks that require human-directed attention-getting to obtain food 23. However, research assessing human-directed gazing by cats in a social referencing paradigm found that most cats do look to their owners when faced with an ambiguous situation 24. It is notable that the socio-communicative abilities of another key species in the human household, the domestic cat ( Felis Catus), have been relatively understudied-perhaps because of the cat’s solitary ancestry 23. Human-directed gazing behaviour has been suggested to be a form of referential and intentional communication 18, 19 and is seen in dogs as young as 2 months old 20, as well as in other domestic species, such as horses 21 and goats 22. Interspecific communication is not one sided either-some domestic animals can also direct communicative behaviour towards humans. Horses, pigs and goats also all perform successfully in following certain human-given cues in object choice tasks 11, 12, 13, and horses and goats can discriminate between different human emotions 14, 15, 16, adjusting their behaviour in functionally relevant ways (in horses 17). More recent studies have revealed that dogs can also gain information through the use of human cues to emotion 7, 8, 9, 10. Dogs are highly skilled in reading human gestural cues to locate hidden food 2, 3, and can differentiate between the attentive states of handlers when making choices 4, 5, 6. A number of domestic animals have been shown to use human-given cues to derive contextual information and perform tasks. The ability to engage in interspecific communication, not only by reading human-given cues but also by producing signals directed at humans, would have obvious adaptive advantages for domestic species, allowing the exchange of important social information. Collectively, our results suggest that slow blink sequences may function as a form of positive emotional communication between cats and humans.įor companion animals, humans act as key social partners, with these species often spending more time with humans than conspecifics 1. In a second experiment, this time where an experimenter provided the slow blink stimulus, cats had a higher propensity to approach the experimenter after a slow blink interaction than when they had adopted a neutral expression. Our first experiment revealed that cat half-blinks and eye narrowing occurred more frequently in response to owners’ slow blink stimuli towards their cats (compared to no owner–cat interaction). #2003 cateye seriesSlow blink sequences typically involve a series of half-blinks followed by either a prolonged eye narrow or an eye closure. This study examines the communicatory significance of a widely reported cat behaviour that involves eye narrowing, referred to as the slow blink sequence. The eyes are important in signalling emotions, with the act of narrowing the eyes appearing to be associated with positive emotional communication in a range of species. Domestic animals are sensitive to human cues that facilitate inter-specific communication, including cues to emotional state. ![]()
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