COPYCAT TRICK EARNS TREATS

So, in my weekly scan of the world’s offerings of fascinating factoids and weird science snippets, I came across this little story of Ebisu, the imitative cat, and her owner, Japanese animal trainer Fumi Higaki.

It seems that Ebisu, like my own oldest kitty, Shadow, is highly motivated by food, so she allows Higaki to undertake “training” with her, as long as treats are involved. She will sit on command and pay attention to what follows, which, as any cat owner knows, is miracle enough. But what makes Ebisu worthy of scientific study is that she has learned how to imitate her owner’s movements when asked to do so. If Higaki twirls in place, Ebisu will twirl in place. If Higaki stands on tiptoe and reaches for the ceiling, Ebisu rears up on her hind legs and “begs.” If Higaki touches a box, Ebisu delicately places her paw on the same box. If Higaki, strokes the box with her cheek, Ebisu does the same.

Sometimes it takes a minute before the cat copies the human action, but in my opinion that’s only Ebisu doing what cats do: considering whether it’s worth her time to do what the human suggests. If either of my cats were the subject of the experiment, she would have been gone long before, treat or no treat, thinking, what madness is this?

The amazing thing here is that Ebisu has not been trained to do any specific action. She’s seeing her owner do the actions for the first time and copying them simply because she knows doing what Higaki does will earn her a treat. The method is called the Do As I Do paradigm, and is used with dogs also. The ability to mimic in this way is only known to exist in higher animals, such as apes, dolphins, and killer whales, in addition to dogs. Ebisu and Higaki were part of a formal study conducted over eight months in 2019 by animal behavior researcher Claudia Fugazza and published earlier this month in the journal Animal Cognition, which showed for the first time that cats can imitate human actions, too.

(Really, this should be no surprise. Research has shown that cats in feral colonies don’t meow to communicate with each other. That’s something they reserve for communication with humans. Humans talk, so cats figure they have to “talk,” too, to get what they want. Some are better at this than others, especially at dinner time.)

Higaki reports that it took Ebisu five months to learn the Do As I Do system of imitating her actions. Then Fugazza came in to video the experiment. Ebisu wasn’t perfect in her responses (she was a cat, after all; she had a reputation to uphold), but through 18 trials, which included the actions described above, as well as opening a drawer and mouthing a toy, she succeeded 81% of the time.

Unfortunately, the study can’t be replicated with Ebisu. The 11-year-old cat sadly passed away from kidney-disease early this year. But Higaki continues to participate in behavioral studies with her canine trainees, and Fugazza remains hopeful someone will attempt to build on the foundation Ebisu provided with further feline studies. Maybe one of you out there has a talented tabby who can contribute to science!

In the meantime, take a look at Ebisu doing her copycat thing.

 

Cheers, Donna

*Information for this post provided by: “Extremely Good Cat Learns to Copy Human Movements,” by Ed Cara, Gizmodo Science, 9/30/2020, https://gizmodo.com/extremely-good-cat-learns-to-copy-human-movements-1845219499