论文标题：Domestic cats (Felis catus) discriminate their names from other words

期刊：Scientific Reports

作者：Atsuko Saito, Kazutaka Shinozuka, Yuki Ito, Toshikazu Hasegawa

发表时间：2019/04/04

数字识别码： 10.1038/s41598-019-40616-4

原文链接：http://nature.com/articles/s41598-019-40616-4

《科学报告》一项对78只猫展开的研究发现，家猫能从口语词汇中分辨出自己的名字。

斋藤慈子和同事考察了猫是否能从其它名词或其它猫的名字中区分出自己的名字。此前研究显示，狗能对人类口头指令做出反应，但猫对于口头指令的理解能力一直有待了解。作者对78只来自日本家庭和一家“猫咪咖啡馆”的猫进行了研究。测试中，一名研究人员或猫主人会说出四个不同的单词以及猫自己的名字。对名字识别的定义是猫能对自己的名字做出反应——表现为动动耳朵、头部或尾巴或发出声音，以及能对第一个听到的单词做出反应，但对自己名字出现前的其它单词反应程度递减（这种现象被称为习惯性）。这些猫能在与自己名字长度一样且重音相同的单词中区分出自己的名字。

作者发现，即使是来自陌生人的声音，这些猫也能从其它单词中分辨出自己的名字。咖啡馆的猫和家养猫从普通名词中识别自己名字的能力较为相似，但咖啡馆的猫不太能从一起生活的其它猫的名字中分辨出自己的名字。作者认为，这种行为的出现可能是因为咖啡馆的猫会反复听见自己的名字与共居同伴的名字一起出现，这会让它们将所有名字与奖赏或惩罚联系起来，而不仅仅是自己的名字。

摘要：Two of the most common nonhuman animals that interact with humans are domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) and cats (Felis catus). In contrast to dogs, the ability of domestic cats to communicate with humans has not been explored thoroughly. We used a habituation-dishabituation method to investigate whether domestic cats could discriminate human utterances, which consisted of cats’ own names, general nouns, and other cohabiting cats’ names. Cats from ordinary households and from a ‘cat café’ participated in the experiments. Among cats from ordinary households, cats habituated to the serial presentation of four different general nouns or four names of cohabiting cats showed a significant rebound in response to the subsequent presentation of their own names; these cats discriminated their own names from general nouns even when unfamiliar persons uttered them. These results indicate that cats are able to discriminate their own names from other words. There was no difference in discrimination of their own names from general nouns between cats from the cat café and household cats, but café cats did not discriminate their own names from other cohabiting cats’ names. We conclude that cats can discriminate the content of human utterances based on phonemic differences.

阅读论文全文请访问：http://nature.com/articles/s41598-019-40616-4

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（来源：科学网）