Individual differences in the sociality of cats are influenced by inherited and environmental factors. We recently revealed that hormones can make a difference in intraspecies social behavior. It remains unclear whether cat behavior toward humans is modulated by hormones. Therefore, we analyzed the relationship between cat behavior and their basal hormone concentrations after spending time together with human experimenters. In addition, we analyzed the relationship between cat behavior and the timing of when the individual cats began living with a human because the sociality of cats could be dependent on their developmental experiences. The results showed that male cats that began living with humans earlier had more contact with an experimenter. In addition, individual male cats with low testosterone levels were more likely to interact with an experimenter. These findings of this pilot study suggest that the sociality of male cats toward humans is affected by testosterone and the age at which they begin to live with humans.

Recognizing invisible entities from auditory information is advantageous to animals in various situations including predator avoidance and foraging. In 2 experiments we asked whether cats could predict the presence of an unseen object on hearing noise it made, based on a causal-logical rule. After observing an experimenter shaking an opaque container for 15 seconds (observation phase), the cats freely explored the environment for 15 seconds (response phase). Experiment 1 tested 3 conditions. In the first, "contingent noise" condition, the object inside the container made a rattling noise when shaken. In the second, "irrelevant noise" condition, white noise accompanied the shaking action. In the third, "no noise" condition, the shaking action was silent. Experiment 2 tested a "noncontingent noise" condition, in which the rattling noise and movement of the container were out of synchrony. In both experiments cats looked at the container for longer in the "contingent noise" condition than the other conditions. These results suggest that cats used a causal-logical understanding of auditory stimuli to predict the presence of invisible objects. This ability may be related to the ecology of cats' natural hunting style. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Humans learn by observing the behaviour of others, which can lead to more efficient problem-solving than by trial-and-error learning. Numerous studies have shown that animals, other than humans, are also capable of social learning. Dogs, as humans’ closest companion animals, can learn to obtain rewards following behavioural demonstrations by humans. However, it is not known whether cats, who also live with humans, can learn how to solve problems by observing human behaviours. Three experiments were used to investigate whether cats could change their behaviour and gain rewards efficiently by observing a human demonstrating how to obtain food. In Experiment 1, a human demonstrated how to open a transparent drawer and take out the reward inside, but cats did not significantly follow the same method as the human. In Experiment 2a, a transparent tube device was used to make the operation easier for cats. However, cats were not influenced by the human behaviour. As the devices used in these experiments were transparent, meaning that the cats could see the food inside directly, they might have required strong inhibitory control. Therefore, in Experiment 2b the tube device was made opaque, and cats again observed the human demonstration. Nevertheless, the cats were not influenced by the human’s behaviour. The results of these experiments indicate a lack of social learning, including imitation, from human behaviours in cats, at least in these experimental settings with food rewards. Other than their inherent ability, cats’ biological characteristics and the experimental context may have contributed towards the negative results.