Science Friday - What Is Your Cat Doing When You're Not Watching?

Episode Date: October 19, 2023

In a conversation from 2019, Ira and the researchers behind a “catcam” study discuss the secret lives of your feline friends.If you want the real scoop on what your cat is doing while you’re away, researchers are studying that very question, using cat cameras. Our feline friends spend quite a lot of time outside of our line of sight, and we imagine them napping, bathing, playing, hunting. But that’s merely speculation. To get the data, researchers need to catch them in the act. Maren Huck, Senior Lecturer at the University of Derby in the UK, recently published a methodological study where she successfully tracked the movements of 16 outdoor domestic cats to find out what they were up to. She joins Ira to discuss the findings, which she published in the journal Applied Animal Behavior Science.Plus, cat behavior specialist and University California, Davis veterinary school researcher Mikel Delgado joins the conversation to talk more about catching cat behavior on camera, and what we can learn from recording their secret lives. To stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.Transcripts for this segment will be available on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

60 years ago this week, a cat named Felisette became the first feline in space. What's your cat up to? Of course, sometimes you find out and maybe you're a little bit shocked by what the camera reveals. We'll peek in on the secret life of cats. It's Thursday, October 19th, and today is Science Friday. I'm sci-fi producer Charles Bergquist. In October of 1963, the French space program launched Black and White Kitty Felisette on a rocket for a 13-minute sub-minute sub-sub.

orbital flight. She returned safely to Earth, but sadly, was euthanized two months later so researchers could examine her brain. Now, your cat might not be zooming to space when you're not looking, but what does she really do all day? We're dipping into the sci-fi archives for this conversation from 2019. Here's Ira. Our feline friends spend quite a lot of time outside of our line of sight, either napping or bathing or playing or hunting, but that's merely speculation because, well. We don't know what they're doing. So to get the data, researchers need to catch them in the act on camera. They need cat cams, and that's what they did. My next guest recently published a study where she successfully tracked the movements of 16 outdoor domestic cats to find out what they

were up to. She joins me now via Skype from the UK. Marron Hook is a senior lecturer at the University of Derby. Dr. Hook, welcome to Science Friday. Welcome. Sorry, good evening. Good evening. Good afternoon, probably. Yes, it is. Thank you. You were the first person to do something like this on this scale, 16 cat cameras. What made you want to try something like this? I'm by no means the first one who did this. So there have been other people who have used cat cameras on cats and probably even on more cats. They had a slightly different approach to it. So they use it to answer a specific question, like how much are they hunting and things like that, or how often do they cross dangerous roads from the animal welfare perspective. And I have done this coming from a similar direction because I wanted to know how much they hunt as well.

But when I watched the videos, I thought actually we can get much more out of it, and we can actually see what kind of behaviors they are doing. And I was intrigued to use that because often it's very difficult to find out what animals are doing when they are out of sight, obviously. And it is very likely that animals behave differently when no observer is there. Why are people so interested in this to know what their cats are doing? well there are various angles to this so there's obviously the angle to the whole predation problem of cats so that you want to know what they are hunting how much they are hunting with there are certain types of habitats where they are hunting more so that you can try to to regulate the hunting more and also to try to find out with there are certain things that can be done to reduce it there's also the cats be behavior study perspective or the cat's welfare perspective. So we can learn much more about the behavior of the cats.

And, well, quite a lot of people like cats very much, and they're great companions. And so we want to understand the animals that we are living with and what they are up to. Yeah. Can you give us some results of what you saw the cats doing? What were they doing? Well, cats are obviously very, I would say, patient animals. So what you can see them doing a lot is just sitting around, but being alert. So you can see from the cat camera footage that they're sitting for half an hour or more at the same spot,

but you can see from the slide movement in the video camera that they are constantly scanning their surroundings, seeing what's going on. and but interspers with that there's also quite a lot of exploration, for example. So a little bit of sniffing here, a little bit of sniffing there. There might be the odd encounter with neighbor cats, and that again I found very interesting the way, how they interact when no other humans are around or, yeah, so that was quite interesting for me. I'd like to bring in another cat researcher who is using cat cameras in her work,

Michael Delgado, postdoctoral researcher at the School of Veterinary Medicine at UC Davis. Dr. Delgado, welcome to Science Friday. Thank you, Ira. What intrigued you about Dr. Huck's study when you saw it? Did Dr. Hook come up with anything that you found unusual? I loved that the study really focused on methodology because so many times we see the results of a study and we don't ask, how did the scientists collect the data? And so this study was really important because not only did Dr. Hook look at what was showing on the cat cams,

but they validated that data by also doing a second camera on the cat where they could see what the cat's perspective was compared with what they actually observed the cat doing. So that really helps those of us that do study cats understand, like, what are the best methods and what can we discern from a cat cam? What can't we discern from a cat cam? So I don't want to speak for Dr. Hook, but I know some behaviors were easier to track from the cat cam than others, behaviors like scratching and climbing versus perhaps, you know, it's more difficult to discriminate between resting or sleeping. And so that really can help future researchers refine their methods in studying cats using cat cams and knowing what they can use them for and what they might need to use other methods for. We've all heard the old expression about how difficult it is to bell a cat. How difficult is it to place a camera on a cat who will actually cooperate with your, Dr. Hook? I think there are two types of cats, really.

They're the cats that perhaps after a little bit of being slightly disgruntled or so will tolerate the color quite, well, I would say cheerfully, not quite, but they don't mind it too much. And then their cats, where you immediately see they don't accept the collar, and then we obviously wouldn't continue trying it. So if the cat says no, then it is a clear no for welfare reasons. But the cats that I tried it on and those for which we had the data didn't show any signs of distress, essentially. Dr. Delgado, how successful have you been on putting cameras on cats? So we're not putting cameras on cats.

We are actually studying indoor cats, and we have a separate camera monitoring the cats. We did use accelerometers, a little fitness, sort of, you know, activity trackers on the cats. Those were quite a bit lighter than your average cat cam. And so overall, the cats did tolerate them, although we had a few cats in the study that didn't even want to wear the small activity tracker. But we kind of skirted the cat cam problem by having external cameras viewing the cats. instead of putting the camera on the cat, again, because we were primarily interested in indoor cat activity rather than cats that have access to the outdoors. Dr. Hook, did you think about putting cameras scattered outdoors for your cats?

I think that wouldn't be feasible because the range size of the cats is too large, and you would only see them for a short second, so you couldn't really do the same kind of studies. You can use wildlife cameras for other purposes outdoors, just to check, for example, how many cats are in an area. So that has been done for wild animals, wild fields as well. But you couldn't really study the behavior in that sense. So you can do that for indoor animals or for animals in a zoo or something like that. But to study the behavior in detail, you need something where you really observe the animals.

Did you notice, and let me ask you first, Dr. Hook, did you notice any different behavior in the cats when they were around people and when they were not around people? and stuff that they would be doing the same way? I think our data that we have collected so far is not enough to scientifically say something for definite. But from what I've seen, I would definitely say yes, and also from my own experience with my own cats, for which I have the largest proportion of the footage.

When she was on her own outside, she would essentially not use my own garden. She would go much further away, actually. But when I was around, I noticed that she was always within one or two meters, so she wouldn't even leave the garden. She was very close to me and not go away. So that was something that was definitely different when I was there and when the cat was not there.

And another thing, again, which is very preliminary, which I think would be extremely interesting to study, is that I had the feeling that the vocalization started to change so that when the cat was outdoors and I also think I noticed it in other cats was when they were outdoors that the vocalizations of the cats sounded slightly different than when they were indoors.

Interesting, Dr. Delgado, did you observe anything different? Well, we know that cats when, so our study was looking primarily at feeding behavior and we know at feeding time that a lot of cats will solicit attention from their owners, either in the form of rubbing, against them or meowing, circling, pacing. And so we do see a lot of activity at feeding time with the owner. And there are other things we know about cats. For example, meowing is a behavior that is very much directed toward humans in adult cats.

We know that kittens meow at their moms. But adult cats do not typically meow at each other. They use other types of vocalizations. And so we know that through the process of domestication and living with humans and learning about humans that cats have figured out that meowing is a successful strategy for getting food, for going outside, getting attention, all of those things. Interesting. Number 844724-8255. Speaking of cats, let's go to Jeff in the greater Houston area.

Hi, Jeff. Hey, how are you guys doing? Hi, go ahead. I just wanted to make a comment. I love Science Friday, by the way. You guys are great. Thank you. but I read about catcams years ago, and it sparked a little bit of curiosity on my part,

so I got a cat cam for my cat. And then also, I cannot remember the name of the message board, but I found out that there were a bunch of other people that had catcams for their cats, too. And a little bit of behavior that I never expected to find out is that cats have multiple homes when they're indoor, outdoor cats. What do you mean by that? Well, what I mean is, for instance, there was a kid down the street that I guess my cat was also his cat. And he would get off the school bus at, say, 315, come home and feed the cat.

And my cat was at his house. And it was his cat. And my cat would go over there and get fed and hang out and get petted and her and do all that stuff. And then I would get home from work at, say, 6. and then suddenly my cat's back at my house being my cat again. And you learned that a second time. And you learned this from the cat cam you put on your cat. Yeah, yeah.

Turns out my cat was cheating on me. Two-timing you. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. I think, Jeff, that's the first for Science Friday. We've heard of a cat cheating on its owner. Did the other owner know that it was cheating on it also? Did you go over there and talk to the other person down the block? Now, I guess it's a little bit of cat voyeurism.

I just watched it. Yeah, no, the cat had two different families. And, you know, when I was out of town, it was their cat. And when I was in town, it was my cat. That's great. And it had two different names. Two different names, two different lives. Thank you.

Let me get a reaction from Dr. Hook. Your cats were roaming around. Did you notice anything like that? Well, my own, well, my current cat, I think, does visit the neighbors, but I still think that he thinks that he's my cat. And my previous cat was very, very close to me, so I think she didn't have a second home in that sense. But I've heard that before, so several cats do that.

Yeah. Do you think that people should be getting commercial catcams now and putting them on their cats to learn more about what they're doing, Dr. Hook? I think it can be quite interesting for the owners as well, although I guess that I don't know how mad you need to be to watch hours and hours and hours of the footage. But some of my students used catcams as well for some projects that they did, and they gave it to friends and relatives. My students told me that some of their friends were actually quite surprised, for example, at how social, in fact, the cats are in terms of their relation to their humans, that they were, for example, following their humans much more than the owners had actually realized. So they definitely learned something by watching the cat cam footage. What do you think, the dog owners are going to say about this? Are they going to say, hey, I need a dog cam study too?

I guess when you're going for a walk with your dog and the dog is free running, then they might also learn things that they wouldn't know. But I guess dogs are usually definitely in the UK and I guess in the U.S. as well, Dogs are normally much more under control than cats are. So I guess there's less time where a dog is away from their humans. But it might be interesting to see what they're doing when they are in the house and the owner's way. So it might be still interesting. Dr. Delgado, would you agree with that in the house, dogs?

Yeah, I mean, dogs are with their humans much more than cats are. And so I think part of what drives the desire and the mystery, you know, what is my cat doing is the fact that cats do spend much more time unsupervised. And as a, you know, a society in general, we've accepted that cats are allowed to roam freely. There aren't the same kinds of laws about free roaming cats. And so I think that that adds to this desire to know what are they doing. And of course, sometimes you find out and maybe you're a little bit shocked by what the camera reveals. Well, now that you know this, what do you do with this information you're gathering? Dr. Delgado.

Oh, what do we as cat owners or scientists? No, as a scientist. What do you do now with this information? Yeah, I mean, I think that every time we are studying cats, we usually have a specific hypothesis in mind or a question that we want to answer, and sometimes we learn other things about how cats spend their time. And as Dr. Huck said, sometimes it's a welfare-related question. And certainly for me, as someone who primarily studies cats who are housed indoors,

I am concerned about their levels of activity. We know obesity is one of the most serious health problems facing our pets. And if they are sitting inside all day just sleeping, then that's important information for us to know in regards to, okay, we need to provide enrichment and activities for our pets that can help them be more active, whether it's when we're gone or when we're with them. I want to thank you both for taking time to be with us today. Dr. Marin Hook, a senior lecture at the University of Derby,

and Dr. Michael Delgado, post-exam. Dr. Researcher School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of California in Davis. Good luck with your cats. Long story short, keep an eye on those cats. That's it for today. Lots of folks helped make the show this week, including Sandy Roberts. George Harper.

Annie Nero. Jason Rosenberg. And many more. Tomorrow on Science Friday, we check in on the week's news and science. Thanks for listening. We'll see you soon on Science Friday.