Cats pay attention to their owners, distinguishing them from all other people, a new study has found.
The study is one of the few to examine the cat/human social dynamic from the feline's perspective.
Co-author Atsuko Saito of The University of Tokyo explained to Discovery News that dogs have evolved, and are bred, "to follow their owner's orders, but cats have not been. So sometimes cats appear aloof, but they have special relationships with their owners."
"Previous studies suggest that cats have evolved to behave like kittens (around their owners), and humans treat cats similar to the way that they treat babies," co-author Kazutaka Shinozuka of the University of South Florida College of Medicine added.
"To form such baby-parent like relationships, recognition of owners might be important for cats," Shinozuka said.
In the study, researchers played recordings of strangers, as well as of the cats' owners, to the felines. The cats could not see the speakers.
The cats responded to human voices, not by communicative behaviour - such as by vocalising or moving their tails - but by orienting behaviour. In this case, "orienting" meant that the cats moved their ears and heads toward the source of each voice.
The felines also, at times, displayed pupil dilation, which can be a sign of powerful emotions, such as arousal and excitement.
All of these reactions happened more often when cats heard their owners, and particularly after they had become habituated to, or familiar with, the strangers' voices.
The feline reactions are therefore very subtle, but cats have evolved not to be very demonstrative.
Cats, for example, hide illness because "in the wild, no one can rescue them and predators pay attention to such weak individuals," Saito said.
Even though a watchful owner would try to save the cat, the feline's gut reaction is to remain stoic and avoid any possible threat at a time of vulnerability.
The study will be published in the journal Animal Cognition.
