Cats Use Physics To Attack Prey

For so long, it is thought that humans are the only creatures on earth who understand physics. But it seems like there are other species that actually can. A new study found that cats actually know the concept of the laws of physics, and it is something that they use quite frequently, especially when it comes to hunting and catching their prey.

According to The News Independent, researchers from Japan found that cats can anticipate the presence of an invisible object inside a box, depending on the sound that containers make when shaken. They also checked whether or not the cat can expect an object to fall out the box when it is turned upside down. The experiment was conducted on 30 domestic cats.

Using the scenarios that they created on the experiment, the team from Kyoto University and his colleagues said the rattling boxes that produced an object and the silent boxes that did not produce anything compiled with the laws of physics, while the opposite defied such laws. . Another thing that the scientists noted was that cats stare longer at containers from the incongruent setup, which means that they know how to manage their expectations.

The study, published in the journal Animal Cognition said that the scientists argued that the hearing tests revealed that cats can comprehend gravity, or something similar to it. Saho Takagi, a co-author of the paper said in an email to The Washington Post, "Our study is the first demonstration that cats seem to grasp the laws of physics."

So what is the importance of this in the cats' hunting abilities? The study discovered that the cats' grasp of the concept of Physics helps them understand the principles of cause and effect. Cats, which are known to have a strong sense of hearing, can help hunt their prey easily by applying these concepts, especially because cats usually hunt at night with a limited vision in the dark.