Will Cats Sit In Imaginary Boxes?

It is known that housecats will sit in any box available, large or small -- but science set out to determine whether cats can perceive (and will sit in) illusory boxes as well. Learn more in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://animals.howstuffworks.com/pets/cats-in-squares-study-news.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey
brain Stuff Lauren Vogel bomb here. It's common knowledge that
if an empty box of any size is left unattended
and a cat finds it, that cat will sit inside
of it. Tiny cats and large boxes, large cats and

(00:21):
tiny boxes. It doesn't matter, as the saying goes, if
I fits, I sits, and it doesn't seem to even
have to be a box. It turns out that any
rectangle will do. A piece of paper, a laptop, of
anything rectangular seems to light up that box sitting instinct
in house cats. In the Twitter hashtag cat square highlighted

(00:46):
this cat quirk. I'm merely taping an empty square on
the floor was enough to lower a cat to sit
or lie down inside of it. A couple of years later,
this hashtag would help animal psychology researcher Gabriella Smith of
Hunter College, City, University of New York a construct an
experiment to gauge cat cognition. In April one, the journal

(01:09):
Applied Animal Behavior Science published her research entitled if I
fits I Sits? A Citizen science investigation into illusory contour
susceptibility in domestic cats. The Smith had seen hashtag cats
square on Twitter and knew that cats would sit inside
a two D square made of tape, not just inside
a three D box. For the article of this episode

(01:32):
is based on how stuff Work. Spoke with Smith, she said, so,
then the question became does this square actually have to
be there? When we ask what is this animal seeing?
People think of using dogs because they're so easily trained,
But cats are the perfect candidate because we already know
they will sit in a two D square. Not only

(01:54):
to cats not have to be trained to do this,
they don't even have to come into a lab to
do it. A cat owners could easily take shapes to
the floor and record their cat's reactions. Thus, the first
cat cognition experiment to use citizen scientists was born. And
what better timing than during the COVID nineteen pandemic. Smith

(02:15):
put out the call for volunteers via Twitter in June
of Much of the world was on lockdown to some degree,
and cat owners were looking for something, anything, really to
do in their homes. Plus, Smith notes cats performed best
at home in the lab, they wouldn't behave naturally. She
designed the experiment so that the humans could gather cat

(02:38):
data over six days. Participants were given templates to print out,
a square to tape to the floor, and a set
of four pac mans, as Smith calls them, that could
make an illusory square. These pac man's are circles that
each have a ninety degree wedge cut out, But when
you arrange them at the corners of an imaginary square,

(02:58):
with the empty wedges or pac man mouths pointed inward,
they formed the four corners of the imaginary square. Scientifically,
this is called a kanitsa square, which means that pieces
of an image are constructing a complete image in our brains.
Our minds see an image in this case of a
square in the negative space, our eyes connect the dots.

(03:21):
If you face the pac man mouths away from each other,
we don't perceive any significant shape. But would cats see
the same things? Smith went into the experiment with frankly
low expectations and an open mind that she was truly
curious to know the answer to her question, but will
cats sit in the square that isn't really there? She

(03:43):
had no preconceived ideas what the cats might choose to do.
She says that this was helpful in designing the experiment,
as her biases for one shape or another weren't in play.
She said, I was lucky I had any participants at all,
given how cats are. She gathered data over the summer
of with participant humans sending in five minute videos of

(04:04):
the shapes on the floor. If the cat positioned its
body within any of the shapes for at least three seconds,
it counted as a data point. Of course, cats are cats.
Sometimes the cat would saunter through the video without sitting
at all. A Smith said, I watched a lot of
empty videos as she recruited five DRED participants, and thirty

(04:26):
were able to complete the entire six day sequence of tests.
Of those, nine cats chose at least one of the
shapes by sitting inside of it with all four feet
for at least three seconds. Though the data set is small,
cats did indeed choose the kanitsa square illusion as often
as they chose the complete square that was taped on

(04:46):
the floor. They chose both of these more often than
the non shape made by the pac man's that we're
facing away from each other a while. This was Smith's
first time using citizen scientists to gather data. She since
been involved in another half dozen citizen science studies with
dogs in the Animal Behavior in Conservation program at Hunter College.

(05:08):
She notes that you don't have to have the cleverest
animal in the world to participate in projects like this.
You just have to follow the instructions then let your
pet do its thing or not. It's all data science.
This research might seem pretty low stakes, but it offers
new insight into animal cognition and psychology. We now know

(05:30):
that cats can connect the dots and see a square
that isn't there. It's also a springboard for more potential research.
Smith said, we see videos from zoos of large cats
sitting in boxes, which makes sense because it's safe, like
a cave or den, But it begs the question, what
a wildcat sit in the outline of a square or

(05:52):
a kinitz As square that isn't a square at all.
This is the fun part of science, asking questions and
devising ways to learn the answers, and then letting those
answers inspire new questions. Today's episode is based on the
article I five Fit si sits The Science behind Cats

(06:14):
Sitting in Squares on House to works dot com, written
by Kristen hall Geisler. The brain Stuff is production of
I Heart Radio in partnership with how stuff Works dot Com,
and it's produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts my
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