Could your cat be your therapist?

If previous studies have concluded that cats and dogs are equally capable of responding to human cues, why then, does the canine species continue to prevail as more “devoted”, “loyal”, and as “man’s best friend”? New research conducted by Moriah Galvan and Jennifer Vonk sought to uncover the true extent to which cats react to human emotional cues (Galvan and Vonk 2016). Past works have posited that it is the dogs’ specific history of domestication and co-evolution with humans that has allowed them to respond so strongly to human cues, this co-evolution is, of course, not present in the history of the domestication of cats. Investigating the strength of this supposed relationship, Galvan and Vonk hypothesized that cats which had close, personal relationships with humans would be able to interpret and react to human subjects demonstrating the emotions of happiness or anger.

To examine whether domesticated cats (F. silvestris catus) were as capable as our canine friends at responding to human emotional cues, Galvan and Vonk observed the behavior of cats when presented with facial expressions, body language, and vocal displays of anger or happiness. To test their theory that close, personal relationships with humans was key, the cats were presented with both familiar and unfamiliar human subjects. For facial and body language cues the researchers found a slightly greater tendency for cats to associate with the familiar subject (their owners) when demonstrating the emotion of happiness. Galvan and Vonk’s findings agreed with previous studies which showed that dogs reacted more strongly to emotional cues of individuals they were familiar with.

Though Galvan and Vonk found a significant positive reacti+o n of house cats to the positive emotion of their familiar owners, they were not able to duplicate this finding with vocal emotional displays. However, Galvan and Vonk suggested that perhaps the cats they observed were reacting in more subtle ways (such as ear orientation) which they had not taken into consideration. Overall, though cats are not quite as receptive to human emotional cues, it is very probable that your own cats, as their familiar owner are more responsive to your emotions. For a species usually characterized as aloof there is something kind of sweet about that, no?

References:

Galvan, M., & Vonk, J. (2016). Man’s other best friend: domestic cats (F. silvestris catus) and their discrimination of human emotion cues. Animal Cognition, 19(1), 193-205. doi:10.1007/s10071-015-0927-4