Caturday felid trifecta: Japan’s Cat Island is losing cats; Defib the cat saved from eviction at a British ambulance station; cats beat kids at word-association game;

Caturday felids are resuming again, though I’m pondering deep-sixing this feature.  But today, at least, we have the usual three items.

First, some sad news from the Tokyo Weekender: Asoshima, one of Japan’s “cat islands” where a gazillion felines roam free and tourists come to feed them, may lost its allure. As the article below notes (click to read), because of spaying and neutering no kittens have been born there, and the existing feline residents are aging.  Click headline to read, and go to this Atlantic article to see some cool pictures.

An excerpt:

It’s an island without accommodation, shops, cafés or even any vending machines. Located a 30-minute ferry ride off the coast of Ozu city in Ehime Prefecture, it’s also a tricky place to get to. Yet despite all of this, Aoshima — commonly referred to as Cat Island — has become a popular tourist spot down the years. The reason is, of course, the large number of cats that inhabit the place. Sadly, though, this feline paradise won’t be around as a tourist destination for much longer. Earlier this month, a tweet on X by aoshima_cat titled “The Future of Cat Island” revealed the gravity of the situation. 

The number of cats is gradually decreasing,” it read. “The felines are getting older. Currently, the cats on the island are all over 7 years old. Since the spaying and neutering carried out in October 2018, no kittens have been born. We think the cats will cross the rainbow bridge in a few years. There are currently five residents on the island. As tourists stop coming to the island, there will be talk of reducing or maybe canceling the regular ferry service. When ‘Cat Mama’ grows old and leaves, that will be the end of Cat Island. It’s a sad story.”  

“Cat Mama” refers to a 73-year-old resident of the island who provides the most care for the felines, including storing food for them. This has become increasingly important as tourist numbers have been dwindling recently, which means the cats are being fed less. Though they receive food donations from all over Japan and eat small creatures on the island, it is believed that without Cat Mama’s support, many of them would go hungry. 

Save the cats! Here’s a 7½-minute video of a visit to Aoshima, which notes the waning number of cats:

A brief history of the island:

Aoshima was previously a remote fishing village that thrived thanks to the huge numbers of sardines in the surrounding waters. It was a great location for fishermen, but they had a rodent problem as rats were gnawing away at their nets. The solution was to adopt stray cats they encountered at various ports. They brought them back on their boats and often left them on Aoshima. This helped kill off the rats and later boosted tourism. Eventually, though, the number of sardines in the area started to decline and residents began to leave. 

The population, which was around 900 after World War II, dropped to 13 in 2017. At the same time, the number of cats was in the hundreds. Aging residents felt there were too many of them and not enough people to look after them. The Aoshima Cat Protection Society, therefore, recommended that every cat on the island be spayed or neutered in order to gradually reduce the population. The sterilizations took place in 2018.

A view on Wikipedia of the cats being fed on Aoshima. Note the preponderance of orange cats. Is that a founder effect?

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Meet Defib the cat, an appropriate name for a cat living in an ambulance station. The article below from the BBC (click to read) tells a more heartening tale than the one above. Defib was going to be given the boot, but he eventually stayed!

An excerpt:

Defib from the BBC:

 

Edward, who used to work at the ambulance station and knew Defib for a decade, told BBC London: “He is very friendly and therapeutic.

“I’m happy that they’ve (LAS) changed their stance, and decided to change their minds.

“It gives Defib a safe, secure place to live for the rest of his days, and also provides staff that outlet and stress relief that pets bring.”

Defib’s message on the petition website concluded, saying: “Thanks so much for giving one small cat such a huge voice. I cannot express how grateful I am.

“Nose boops for all!”

9.5 minutes of Defib on the news:

And a short Tik Tok video showing Defib in action before he was saved:

@rapidblues

Save Defib the cat ❤️ Victory! Defib wins! ❤️🐈‍⬛ “With all your help, love and kindness a decision has been made to let me stay in my beloved home with my amazing friends. Thanks so much for giving one small cat such a huge voice. I cannot express how grateful I am. Nose boops for all!” #xyzbca #ambulancedriver #fyp #ambulance #paramedic #emt #nhs

♬ You’ve Got a Friend in Me – Michael Bublé

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Now here we have some SCIENCE: to wit, an article from the eponymous journal showing that cats outstrip babies in the task of associating words with images. Click below to read about feline smarts:

An excerpt:

Even if your cat hasn’t gotten your tongue, it’s most likely getting your words. Without any particular training, the animals—like human babies—appear to pick up basic human language skills just by listening to us talk. Indeed, cats learn to associate images with words even faster than babies do, according to a study published this month in Scientific Reports. That means that, despite all appearances to the contrary, our furtive feline friends may actually be listening to what we say.

Cats have a long history with us—about 10,000 years at last count—notes Brittany Florkiewicz, an evolutionary psychologist at Lyon College who was not involved in the work. “So it makes sense that they can learn these types of associations.”

Scientists have discovered a lot about how cats respond to human language in the past 5 years. In 2019, a team in Tokyo showed that cats “know” their names, responding to them by moving their heads and ears in a particular way. In 2022, some of the same researchers demonstrated that the animals can “match” photos of their human and feline family members to their respective names.

The article is actually in Nature Scientific Reports, and you can access it by clicking below:

The summary (from Science, not the article above) tells how they assessed the cats’ facility at word association:

“I was very surprised, because that meant cats were able to eavesdrop on human conversations and understand words without any special reward-based training,” says Saho Takagi, a comparative cognitive scientist at Azabu University and member of the 2022 study. She wondered: Are cats “hard-wired” to learn human language?

To find out, Takagi and some of her former teammates gave 31 adult pet cats—including 23 that were up for adoption at cat cafés—a type of word test designed for human babies. The scientists propped each kitty in front of a laptop and showed the animals two 9-second animated cartoon images while broadcasting audio tracks of their caregivers saying a made-up word four times. The researchers played the nonsense word “keraru” while a growing and shrinking blue-and-white unicorn appeared on the screen, or “parumo” while a red-faced cartoon Sun grew and shrank. The cats watched and heard these sequences until they got bored—signaled by a 50% drop in eye contact with the screen.

Next, the team gave the animals a short break and then ran the images on the screen four more times. On this round, though, there was a twist: Half the images came with the “wrong” word audio—keraru for the Sun, and parumo for the unicorn.

Visibly perplexed, the cats spent an average of 33% more time looking at the screen when hearing such mismatches—a sign they had learned to associate the original words with images, Takagi says. “Some cats even gazed at the screen with their pupils dilated during the ‘switched’ condition,” she says. “It was cute to see how seriously they participated in the experiment.”

Surprisingly, the vast majority of the cats had learned each word-image association after only two 9-second lessons. By contrast, most 14-month-old human babies need four 15-second lessons, including hearing each word seven times per lesson, as opposed to four. “Cats pay attention to what we say in everyday life—and try to understand us—more than we realize,” Takagi says.

It’s amazing that the cats learned the association after only 18 seconds of exposure—less than a third the time needed by 14-month-old babies! A few caveats, though (and I’ve left out the comparison with d*gs):

Still, the results don’t necessarily mean human babies are slower to learn words than our feline friends, says Janet Werker, a developmental psychologist at the University of British Columbia. Despite the cat test being modeled after one she and her colleagues designed in the late 1990s for babies, there are still notable differences in the methods. The cats in Takagi’s study heard three-syllable words in highly exaggerated speech by their own caregivers, for example, whereas babies heard one-syllable words spoken in a range of intonations in an unfamiliar voice.

. . . . Critically, cats appear to be learning these word associations without any training or clear promise of reward for doing so—the same way babies learn languages, Takagi says.

For Dror, however, comparisons with other species hardly matter. “What’s really relevant is that they are doing it,” she says. “And for me, that’s the most interesting part.”

That last bit reminds me of a famous (and misogynistic) quote by Samuel Johnson:

“Sir, a woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.”

h/t: Barry