I give in: elebenty gazillion readers sent me this hilarious video of cats stealing d*gs’ beds, which, of course, was exactly what I encountered in Poland. The dog Emma regularly slept on the hard floor while Hili-Cat, refusing her own nice bed, appropriated Emma’s. Although this video features d*gs, it does so in an unflattering light, and so it will be part of today’s Caturday felids. This may in fact be the one item I’ve been sent most frequently by readers in the history of this website. I conclude that most readers like to see cats triumphant.
The d*gs are impotent, powerless. They clearly perceive the cats as superior animals.
Several readers also sent me this interesting piece from Popular Science, “See the world through the eyes of a cat.” It uses “science” to depict how cats see the world. I’m not convinced.
Artist Nickolay Lamm, who has previously brought us visualizations of urban heat islands and sea level rise projections, took a look at the world through kitty eyes for his latest project. Lamm consulted with ophthalmologists at the University of Pennsylvania’s veterinary school and a few other animal eye specialists to create these visualizations comparing how cats see with how humans do. How we see things is represented on top; how a cat standing next to us would see the same scene appears below.
If a moggie found its way to Times Square, in New York City, this is what it would supposedly see:
How did they do this?
Some of the cat-eye facts he took into account: The blurry edges of the pictures represent peripheral vision. Humans have a 20 degree range of peripheral vision on each side. Cats can see 30 degrees on each side. Their visual field overall is just bigger—they see 200 degrees compared to our 180 degrees.
Cat vision isn’t so great at a distance. What we can see sharply from 100 feet away, they need to see at 20 feet. From what researchers can tell, cats can see blue and yellow colors, but not red, orange or brown, which is why all the images look a little washed out. Your kitty sees in Instagram, it seems. Not so good for looking at far-away, lush landscapes.
Well, the problem here is that they’re simulating vision based on the morphology of cat’s eyes, and perhaps some experiments on peripheral vision. You can probably detect the problem with this already.
Here’s that New York cat in Grand Central Station, also in New York:
The problem is that we have no idea how the cat’s brain processes the visual input, and about that we have no idea. The cat could, for instance, see even worse than this, or might compensate for the problems by seeing better than the pictures suggest.
A cat in the mountains would supposedly see this:
What about at night? We all know that cats are far better than we at seeing in the dark. Here’s a simulation of cats’ night vision.
Cats can see some six to eight times better than us in the dark, partially because they have more rods, a type of photoreceptor in the retina. Their elliptical pupils can open very wide in dim light, but contract to a tiny slit to protect the sensetive retina from bright light. And like other animals that evolved to hunt at night, cats have a tapetum lucidum, a reflective layer of tissue that bounces light that hits the back of the eye out through the retina again for a second chance to be absorbed by the rods. It’s also what gives them those terrifying glowing eyes in pictures.
Well, maybe, but again we don’t know how the brain of a cat would interpret the input. The bottom doesn’t look all that better than the top. Maybe it’s accurate, but perhaps cats can, like a camera, somehow compensate even more by increasing the “exposure” it perceives.
At any rate, at least this tells us something about peripheral vision and perhaps about the colors cats perceive. The problem of how the brain processes information in another species—what it really “sees”—is a problem of qualia, and one that, for the present, is unknown. Someday we might be able to download a cat’s brain onto a computer and get that kind of information, but of course you’d have to find a way to give that computer noms, and eventually we’d find computers taking over our beds.
I wish they’d have mentioned the brain problem, but, after all, it’s “popular science.”
“Someday we might be able to download a cat’s brain onto a computer…”
Why does this sound like the start of that “computers taking over the world and enslaving us all” scenario…
Cats would rule the world right now if they had opposable thumbs. We don’t need to upload them to Skynet.
Oh, but they do have opposable thumbs: ours!
Surely, if that were to happen, the computer would spend most of its time in ‘sleep’ mode?
+1
And, come to think of it, most of its operational time would be spent chasing the mouse?
And +1 for you too.
Yeah, well, if dogs routinely booted cats out of their beds you’d complain about what ogres dogs are.
No, if that happened, we’d be feeling sad about the rise in emergency visits to the vet by dogs attacked by cats. Cats are usually quite capable of getting what they want on their own. Half the dogs in the video were helplessly standing by, asking for human intervention on their behalf.
Because they were polite dogs and they liked their kitties. My dog is a big oaf who thinks she’s the size of her face when she’s over 100 pounds. She’d just sit on top of the kitty like she does everyone else that is in her way. 🙂
I have two big dogs and a cat. If my cat tried to boot either of my dogs out of their bed she (the cat) would get soundly thrashed.
Why choose cats over dogs or vice versa? You can have the best of both worlds. Taking my dogs hunting and fishing and hiking is one of my supreme pleasures in life, a pleasure which would be impossible with a cat. But my cat has so many things about her that I adore as well. I would never want to choose between them. Both species are absolutely amazing.
Erm…I go hiking with Baihu….
b&
(I agree with you, but don’t admit it around here. 😉 )
I understand that dogs attach particular importance to the place where they sleep, and a dominant dog will install himself in the sleeping place of lesser dogs to show who’s alpha. Presumably the cats are playing the dogs’ game here, but is there a similar hierarchical code among cats? Do cats just know what will get dogs’ goats, so to speak?
In my experience as den mother of multi-cat households, cats have a very egalitarian approach to who gets to use preferred sleeping spots. It’s basically first-come first-served. It seems to be understood that the bigger or more dominant cat doesn’t get to boot out the less dominant cat if she’s there first.
The exception, however, is the super highly preferred human lap. There the dominant cat will boot out the less dominant, providing the human whose lap it is doesn’t interfere.
You might have not heard of Hubel & Wiesel with their discovery of neurones (1959) in cat’s brains that respond to visual edges?
There was a Nobel prize for some of the H&W work in 1981. Sadly Hubel recently died.
Their results influenced people at MIT working on computer vision, eg David Marr.
Personally, I always feel uncomfortable with experiments such as these.
As we all know, seeing like a cat and most other animals, means still objects can’t be identified. But, even the slightest movement is picked up. Other animals only see sihouettes or outlines, and even if they do see color it may be a different color than we see. It amazes me that a bull frog can make a six foot jump and catch a moving butterfly with vision so utterly different from ours.
Awww, the dogs at the end are cuddling the kitties.
I agree about the cat vision thing. Our brains do a lot of the visual processing and filter out a lot like the blue colour in shadows; your brain ignores this but your camera picks it up. Same with floaters (deposits in the eye’s vitreous humour, not dead people in water) for a while you see them until your brain learns to ignore them.
Whew! No controversies erupting here about d-g accomodationism 🙂
Those simulations of feline vision might be more representative than you’re giving them credit, for Jerry. We can do similar things for humans with color blindness. See, for example, this top Google search result:
http://www.vischeck.com/
Cheers,
b&
The video is both hilarious and adorable. But the real reason the dogs are begging their humans for intervention is that they have learned from their humans that the cats are privileged. The cat, being a member of the household, is officially not edible. It’s the humans as much as or more than the animals themselves who have established the social behaviors on display in the video.
Yes, I agree with this. All dogs are taught not to chase cats, mostly because the cat would lose any real confrontation. The dogs are not obeying the cat, they are obeying their people. The cat is taking advantage of the situation. I love cats just like all critters, but I love dogs too. The two species have been domesticated to relate to us in unique, characteristic ways. And of course we have been “domesticated” to relate to them.
Yes that sounds about right for both species — dogs being taught not to hurt the cat and the cats knowing they can take advantage of this.
That’s only because the dogs are typically much, much bigger than the cats. Pound-for-pound, cats are far more efficient and deadly predators than dogs. In a confrontation between a single Mexican gray wolf and a single mountain lion, whose geographic ranges and physical sizes overlap, the wolf would be in dire trouble. The cat is stronger, faster, more flexible, and has sharper claws and teeth. And much better stalking skills, for that matter. A pack of wolves against a lone cougar, of course, would be a different story.
An healthy ten-pound cat should have no trouble physically dominating (or worse) a fifteen-pound dog and should hold his own very well against most twenty-pound dogs. Of course, even twenty pounds is small for a domestic dog, which is why the cats generally need the protection their human slaves offer. But an healthy (not overweight) 30-pound bobcat would need no protection at all from virtually any pet dog, regardless of how big or mean. And 30 pounds isn’t at all big for a dog.
Cheers,
b&
As anybody who’s ever attempted to bathe a tiny kitten will verify.
In my younger days I was a roadie for a magician’s show. One of the most memorable moments was sharing the stage with a performer who made a leopard appear, then paraded around with the cat draped around his neck. (And, no, I certainly do not approve of animals being exploited in this fashion. In fact, this incident is one that hardened my attitude. ) The man was around 180 lbs, the leopard around 80 lbs and declawed. But the leopard became unruly and started to struggle. It had no problem taking the man down. It did a lot of damage.
A small but motivated house cat can easily best a much larger but less motivated dog.
While I’m sure it’s possible to build trusting, loving relationships with a big cat in such a way that giving one a lift on one’s shoulders (as I regularly do with Baihu) is reasonable, I’m even more certain that that’s something that would take great devotion to achieve. And I really don’t see how something like that could be compatible with a life as a stage performer, unless you just happened to find a gregarious cat who really got a kick out of showing off. Even then, you’d have to be in a position to respect the cat and cancel or modify the show if the cat wasn’t in the mood — which the cat would likely be more often than human singers get a cold. Again, not a recipe for a successful stage career.
b&
When I worked for a vet, I could handle any dog.. Because all they do it bite. The occasional uncooperative cats, however created major problems. A visiting vet who did not heed my warning was a little too slow grabbing one for surgery. He spent two weeks in the hospital, when it shredded his arm in seconds.
I can easily believe that. Baihu spends an awful lot of time on my shoulders — he’s there right now as I type — and my shoulders are perpetually scratched up as a result. Not from anything malicious on his part; just from gripping a bit harder if he feels unbalanced…or, just now, when he launched himself off to go have a look at something out the window.
The last thing you want to do is get into a fight with a cat. The cat might not win, but you certainly won’t, either.
b&
Yeah and those sharp teeth hurt. A cat bite is the worst because you get an infection easily. A family friend was bitten by his own cat and had to be on intravenous antibiotics for several weeks! We all remember Pinky the Cat. 🙂
Still, I’d rather be bitten by a cat, then a truly vicious dog. There have been instances where unscrupulous people with vicious dogs set their dogs on other people and their dogs. It is terrifying even though I have a big dog, a messed up animal is out to kill.
Pinky– O.M.G.!!
Agree–dog jaw power and just athleticism are nothing to dismiss, though they’re so incredibly evolved to live with us (shorthand language folks) it’s easy to forget that.
(Not to say you were dismissing it, S.A. Gould. Even w/o having your experience I’d feel the same way about handling most dogs vs. iffy cats…)
Pack mentality is the advantage dogs have going for them. I can capture a whole room of feral cats trapped in an abandoned room, because it’s “Every cat for themselves!” Dogs can just as easily decide, “We can take her!”
“The bottom doesn’t look all that better than the top.”
But only aesthetically I think, one can see a lot more of what’s going on in the bottom picture
And gee, I thought it looked a lot better.
Jerry, it is true that simulating vision is a very tricky problem but it is certainly not true that “we have no idea how the cat’s brain processes the visual input”. Cat is one of the very few mammals whose visual cortex has been studied in detail. There are difference between the visual systems of cats and primates, but as far as we know, the principles are very similar.
Check out the book “The Cat Primary Visual Cortex” edited by Payne and Peters. It will show you how much we know about cat’s visual cortex.
Some cats find better places to sleep:
http://now.msn.com/stray-cat-wanders-into-pet-store-and-finds-bed-of-its-dreams?ocid=vt_fbmsnnow
These were pretty funny. Loved Kung-Fu Kitten!