Hey there, everybody. Welcome to Uno Dos of Trace. I am Trace, and I have a cat and I
love her. Last week, a viral video of a paste filter showed cats reacting to their owners
cat face. It definitely made me lol So I did it with my cat. Maybe you did with your cat
to let me know if you did. I was already working on a video at that time about cat facial expressions.
And so here I am recording it. So this is actually perfect timing, because a new study
found that some of us are cat whisperer. Is that cool? Yeah, it's cool. Some of us can
read the facial expressions of cats. If cats are so inscrutable. Why is this so funny?
Two out of three households in the US have some kind of a pet. It could be a bird or
a durable it could be a dog, a guinea pig, a cat, even a horse. two out of every three
that's 71 million households, which is up 40% since 1988, when this pet survey was first
done. What do you think though is the number one pet in the United States by the numbers
Actually fish. Fish are the most popular pet there are 172 million fish in US ohms followed
by 94 million cats and 80 million dogs. Although dogs when if you look at households overall,
and also media attention, cats are the most numerous social animal living with us United
States. Ian's in our homes, and yet, they're not really understood. Cats are sort of inscrutable,
right? You can't read them. Who knows what they're thinking? They don't even like people.
That's actually not true at all. Because cats aren't inscrutable, says science. Instead,
we just have to know where to look.
Hey, everyone, Trace here. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm sorry, I missed you the
last couple of weeks. I was in Brazil and Japan and everywhere else, but now I'm back.
So let's talk about cats. We have this thing on our fridge that the ASPCA gave us when
we adopted carmella It's a cat behavior guide. Do you think we would need this if we had
a dog like probably not right? They wouldn't give you a chart that says this is how your
dog feels happy. It's sort of mind blowing.
That we have more cats in our houses than any other fuzzy pet in this country. And yet
we need a chart to understand them. Without this chart, would you know what your cat is
saying to you with its facial expressions. This is so compelling, because we invite these
animals into our homes. And yet, we don't always know what they're thinking and feeling
while they're here. Some people believe that every cat is like out to get them it's going
to like kill them in their sleep or something or eat them after they die. Not true. Well
not true with any more likelihood than any other pet. And some other people believe that
cats are just there to be a cuddle, buddy, but they don't really like you. And some want
silent and separate companions in their house. They don't feel so lonely and cats can do
all of those things and fulfill all of those roles. But new research from the University
of Guelph finds that 87% of humans have no idea what their cat is thinking based only
on their face. They found this out by giving over 6000 people from 85 countries a quiz.
And this is it. Only 13% of humans scored 75%
For better on this quiz, most failed. They made the quiz using the internet's greatest
resource. cat videos. Remember all those hours you sat and watched cats on the internet?
It turns out all those videos have done the scientific community a solid. Good job, internet.
Pat yourselves on your collective backs. Just for fun. I gave this quiz to my friends and
their pets. I got Pete to help me with the quiz. Can you just change the tab on the iPad?
Hey, Kitty. Good kitty. All right, get out of here. Let's take it together to get a better
idea of how this works. I'll put the poll answers in the cards here. So click that to
participate. So what do you think this cat is feeling? Is it positive? Is it negative?
Or do you not know? Take a good long look. Click on the card this cat is feeling
he looks chill. Seems like a positive cat. It's hard to see when you can only see the
face. Oh, that's a snuggling cat.
That's positive. That's definitely a snuggling kitty. This orange tabby boy was getting his
pets juice.
So happy. How about this little button? positive negative? Don't know
that cat looks a little bit shifty doesn't look super happy unlike you right now my little
lovey that. That cat does not look happy to me. I'm gonna say Mona doesn't want a picture.
That's how much she doesn't know. Okay, I think it's positive try
this sport youngster was on a treadmill being exercised. Oh poor guy. I can relate to that
for sure wedding diet. Oh, okay, last one positive negative. Don't know.
I think this cat's curious. Like he's seeing like a toy fly around. That's a very attentive
cat. And I think that was one of the positive traits that we observed earlier. Looks like
he's following a toy or something. I would say positive because it looks he looks engaged
by it. So how'd you do? Have a cat whisperer? I got 100% turned out that being a cat lover
made no difference.
Prince in how people performed on this quiz hundred percent.
Women tend to score slightly higher than men. Although it was super close, he scored six
out of eight, so it's fine. We're not cat whispers which is pretty obvious just fine.
Look at us. Look at us.
The researchers that did this quiz hope that we can learn how the cat Whisperer is learned
to read the cat faces. So we can train more people to do that not just giving people charts
in the fridge and hoping for the best. This isn't the first time we've tried to understand
exactly what cats are thinking in the 1950s and 70s Paul lakehouse and published a book
about cat behavior in which there are different charts to help us understand what Lieutenant
Commander fuzzy Fanny is actually thinking. The charts are great. As you can see, it's
pretty rudimentary cat communication still very elusive. And generally speaking, facial
expressions are powerful nonverbal cues that signal others what we're thinking and if we
don't understand facial
freshens, there's a lot of communication last, if I make this face, or this, or this, or
this, you know exactly what's happening right? According to research from Ohio State humans
have 21 different facial expressions way more than the handful of emotions portrayed in
that documentary inside out. Generally speaking, we know exactly what face another person is
pulling without having to really be coded right. Humans use eyebrow raises and furrowed
brows and mouth shapes like smiles or frowns to determine facial expressions. We read our
dog pets to mimic these expressions in us, but cats don't do that in the same way. Instead,
cats communicate with vocalizations and with body language, cats rarely meet each other.
They mainly me out humans, which is a sign of adaptation to their domestication. They
PR which can be an indicator of happiness, but it can also indicate hunger or stress
and anxiety. Sadly, we don't have a lot of research on our little Patrick Stewart
Most is dominated by quote, you know, man's best friend. And this makes a lot of sense
because dogs are easier to read. They're more, let's say food motivated that makes them easier
to study and I always wondered why my dog loving cat eating friends thought that cats
were out to murder them, but they probably just couldn't get a read on what the little
footballs were thinking, which makes people uncomfortable. And I get and I'm here to say,
be your cat or your friends cat is not out to kill you. And in fact quite the opposite.
Like any pet, a socialized cat loves its owner and is bonded with it. And in fact, research
shows cats love people like a lot, even more than they love toys and food. This is based
on behavioral research at the Oregon State University from 2017. They found that cats
are bonded to humans as strongly as dogs or infants are in another study, they found that
both pet and shelter cats would express more initial interest in a human in a room, then
food toys are an interesting set.
I don't want to start a fight in the comments, but show me a dog that goes to a human before
food. And I'd be quite shocked. They tested this by putting cats or kittens with their
owners in an unfamiliar room. The owner would leave the room for two minutes, and the idea
was to see what the cat did when the owner came back. If the cat ignored the human that
would indicate the cat didn't really care about it. It wasn't fun. But if it went to
the human bond, the percentage of cats that showed they were bonded to their human 66%
similar to dogs and infants. Other studies showed the cats maintain this bond over time,
dogs were kind of like children, but cats they're more like friends, they do their own
thing, but they really like you just aren't always there waiting for your attention. Cats
might be thought of as solitary. But it turns out social bonds are extremely important.
It's interesting because the more we research our little Luke sky whiskers The more we debunk
the idea that cats aren't that into us. And in fact, we've found that cats adjust their
behavior to match the amount of attention they're getting from their humans.
You want to social cat socialize it you want to present but inscrutable companion, treat
your cat that way it will ignore you as well. Researchers found that cats are sensitive
to our moods and to our emotions, and that they even know their own names. Yes, you can
behaviorally train a cat, you just have to figure out what motivates it. And I love this
research. Anytime that we can understand our little shapers better. We should try. I love
watching my friends take this quiz too. So make sure you give it to your friends. Both
dog and cat people are fun to watch, because cats are frickin fun. There's a reason that
cat videos are everywhere on the internet. We're fascinated by them. Maybe part of that
is because we don't always understand what they're thinking. Did you ever think of that?
Full disclosure, I've had cats my whole life and I currently have a beautiful little rescue
sweetie named Carmela you may have seen on my Insta. And also earlier, I got 100% on
the short version of the quiz. So I'm a cat whisperer, I guess according to their short
version, and I didn't do as well on the advanced version, but no cat communication should be
considered in isolation. Cats use body language
Eyes, ears, faces and tails to give insight into what they are thinking. And this is not
unlike humans, our face could be laughing. But if our shoulders are slumped and our eyebrows
and eyes are down, even if we're smiling, we're probably not happy. Just like studies
with dogs and tiny humans, studies with cats are showing that they are more empathetic,
more nuanced, and definitely more social than some people previously believed. So if you're
a cat person, rejoice. Perhaps this new research could help us understand our fuzzy animal
friends a bit more. I want to say since we're near the end of the video dogs are incredible
as well. We got dogs by selectively breeding wolves, and we only kept the cute ones. So
what happened to the non cute ones?
Exactly what you think we didn't do this with cats. They domesticated different. We didn't
read only the ones that communicated with us. Maybe in 1000 years, some cats will adapt
and grow facial muscles to make facial expressions that we like. But for now, we should just
learn to communicate as best we can get them all in love and attention that we have. It's
not only
Like having a bird or a turtle or a horse, or whatever other pet you like. Just because
it's more effort doesn't mean it's not valuable because they are perfect, just the way they
are. Thank you so much for watching everyone. I really hope you loved this video, share
it with your friends. If you did, make sure you go down into the description click the
link if you want to shoot me over an idea for a future story. Make sure you check out
the quiz. Let me know how you did either here or on Twitter or wherever. You can find the
social medias for all the BFF who took the quiz, and also for my patreon if you want
to support the show. I'm hoping that you learned something from this. I know I did while I
was researching it. I'll see you in the future and Happy Holidays!