The role of cat eye narrowing movements in cat–human communication (2020) | Hacker News Reader

The role of cat eye narrowing movements in cat–human communication (2020)

nature.com

127 pointsbushwart61 comments

sticking a finger out for them to sniff and rub against is another good one. hypothesis is that it's not dissimilar from the way cats bump noses and rub their scent off on each other

I also like making myself small and crouching and being as still as possible. I've befriended many skittish feline this way

I really like cats :)

I do all that plus I growl, hiss, rub my nose/cheeks against theirs, lick and groom their neck and forehead area just like cats. I imitate a dozen more cat behaviours.

I'm blessed with a lot of stray cats and slow-blinking alone helped me become friends with the most feral and aggressive tomcats here.

Do you think that licking cats helps you befriend them?

Lots of research assistants will have to lick cats to reach a significant Sigma for proving this statement.

All on-campus cats will be very very confused for a while.

Your petting of them mimics the licking feeling. The sweat on your hands gently pulls the fur, tugging on it, producing a similar sensation as another cat licking that cat.

I wonder. Cat's tongues are pretty rough!

My cat likes 80 grit (gently).

Yup and I often use my 1-3mm chin beard to mimick the licking procedure because I noticed that my cats like it more.

So it's like: wet their forehead with saliva or water => rub with my chin.

Excuse me for asking, but are you a cat?

(You know how they love keyboards, so..)

Yes I am. It all makes sense now.

This works for most dogs as well, or any pet really. Scent is very important for them and builds trust.

My semi-outdoor cats are extremely anxious in cars. The vet is 150km away and they hurt themselves in the journey out of panic.

During one trip I decided to roll my cat in her usual blanket and then kept comforting her. I also played the usual music I play at house. This really helped calm her down. Putting her in a carrier was making her more anxious but being held in her own blanket made her feel safer.

Yes! I picked up a similar trick so to speak from Jackson Galaxy.

The main rule for me is this: show that you’re not a threat, don’t get too close but give them a chance to approach you. Curiosity > fear

Unfortunately my dog has too much of a prey drive to tolerate cats, but the silver lining is that he’s quite cat-like anyway.

https://untested.sonnet.io/notes/dog-mode/

I sometimes am asked to explain the behavior of friends’ pets, as I often on the end of joshing about me being a Disney princess, since folks’ animals get glued to me.

A cat of three years residence, the mother was frustrated that only her son was tolerated by the skittish animal. No lap, no pets, just distance. They went out of town for a few days so I was to cat-sit. First night, I sent a picture of the cat in bed with me, not quite touching.

I had done some experiments and the cat just did not like eye contact at all. Additionally, she prefers to be at fingertip distance, if one stretches. I sat in the bed, next to and facing the wall. Ten minutes of headboard staring in, the cat is parked about six inches behind me.

Full Raiders of the Lost Ark mode. After my suggestions, the cat was less distant. Now, when I visit, I put my jacket on the couch about three feet off. Poof, a cat appears on my jacket. I do not acknowledge. Sometimes my hand dangles near the floor and I get a brush-by. That is what she is comfortable with. You have to take them as they come.

All cats are neurotic; each cat is neurotic in its own peculiar way.

Cats are awesome, cute, and a stress relief for me. Im still doesn't have enough time playing with my cats, sad, but it's okay, cause i need job to feed em. lol And slowly blinking at them is a pure emotional way to communicate, i feel it, relaxed, and it's a heart warming when they response with a slow blink too. loved them so much.

My apartment bans all pets. The agent even told me I can't keep fish. I really wish I could fall asleep next to a cat. Their purring is absolutely mesmerizing.

Do saltwater aquariums fall under pets? Technically they're animals, but maybe they're not defined as such in your contract.

Just an idea if you want some kind of animal hobby :)

> Do saltwater aquariums fall under pets? Technically they're animals, but maybe they're not defined as such in your contract.

I don't see how an aquarium is an animal??? It's just glass/maybe plastic and framing.

Anyway, probably a saltwater acquarium is ok, unless you fill it or have something living in it. Acquariums with water are often specifically prohibited because of the posibility of failure and subsequent water damage.

Aquariums are perhaps the worst for landlords. They're difficult to move if you abandon them, and can flood entire floors.

https://purrli.com/

That's great!

Thanks!

Wow. It's so... accurate.

You should get an illicit goldfish at least, how would they know? Some rules need to be broken on principle.

You should check if your agent's claim is even legal.

By the way, how are tamagotchis doing in the age of AI? Maybe get a robotized pet?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamagotchi

> You should check if your agent's claim is even legal.

Even if not legal, renters commonly don't have enough rights to make challenging these things practical/possible.

And when moving is difficult to impossible (given the pile of cash it takes) renters make do with that they have.

Just experienced this with one of the reclining mountain lions at the San Diego Zoo; the same two short blinks followed by an extended slow blink in response to my own. There were others nearby but we alone seemed to be “sharing that moment”.

This is common knowledge among cat owners. Slow blink is the closest signal to "I love you".

> I trust you so much I choose to momentarily close my eyes in your presence. I know you won't rip me apart with your claws, although you have the capacity to do so as a predator.

I love/trust you and will close my eyes, but once my eyes are closed I can't see what you're doing, so I check multiple times if you also love/trust me by blinking a few times

Another cat one is that i’m pretty about is that sitting or sleeping in another's usual spot is in no way a sign of dominance.

My cats do this to each other and it’s clearly taken as an invitation for affection by the other cat. They’ll sit in my chair and be happy when i gently wiggle in with them too.

It leads to a lot of stolen dog beds due to the interspecies communication barrier but i’m absolutely convinced it’s not the assholery it’s perceived to be. Merely a miscommunication.

My cat does both. He will sit in human spots hoping the human will join him and perhaps be better furniture.

And he will sprawl all over the dog bed,with the intent of rubbing in that he is there and the dog is not going to take it.

It’s all about scent. If they like to sleep on something that smells like a person or another animal, that’s a clear sign of affection. And it goes both ways, which is why when introducing two cats it’s recommended to let them get used to each other’s scent first and associate it with positive things like food or pets.

Growing up with cats I feel like I just learned this naturally.

Me, too. Conversely, my wife seems to have little intuition for what cats or dogs are feeling. She grew up without any animals. It's probably like human language - fluency is more likely to be achieved in childhood.

For me it's like reading that someone just discovered that grapes are sweet and wrote an article about their discovery.

Yeah. Even when I was child I knew that compared to a cat I was gigantic. It wasn't hard to realize that if you wanted the animal to stick around you were quiet, crouched and led with an out stretched hand.

I mean, except for our cats where you'd just walk up and grab 'em about the middle, drag them up to eye height for a quick scratch under the chin and about the ears.

Having grown up with cats (and other animals), I learned this as a young kid.

Another big thing is head movement. You can indicate submission, aggression, relaxed, etc by the way you direct your head and eyes. You can also do this with other animals, I can get deer in my backyard to respond back and forth with me with head bobs and movements as I mimic the way they interact.

Now a double-blind scientific study must be performed to evaluate the effectiveness of pspsps.

Most animals show relaxation and stress through the eyes.

I use the same trick for dogs, I narrow my eyes slightly to show that I'm not staring at them wildly. Even if they just stare back.

Staring is a stress reaction, you're 100% focused on a potential threat.

How did you learn that staring is a stress reaction? I have never thought of it but it makes total sense...

"Subjects

In total 24 cats were recruited from local online advertisements."

Was there an AMA (ask-me-anything) by one of these 24?

I didn't realize they kept their eyes half open, though. Will try that next time I meet a cat.

I’ve been slow blinking at every cat I meet for years, I swear by it haha

My mum calls them cat kisses, and we do it with other cats too, lol!

slow blink?, didnt hear this one before!

try locking eyes and NOT blinking, you will need to channel every last bit of malevolent evil you got, but the hissy fit is worth it!

or in exceptionaly high stress situations looking AT the cat(wild, ferral,10lb tom trapped in the porch), but not focusing on it's eyes, untill it tucks its head, step OVER it and open the outside door, and it bolts so fast it leaves a cartoon puff of hair.

the search for intelligent life in the universe should be looking around, not up.

Yes, sometimes when your cat is looking at you like it’s half asleep, it’s really expressing its comfort with you.

The other movement—weirdly more prevalent among American than European cats?—is looking away after the slow blink.

It also seems to work on nervous small dogs.

> It also seems to work on nervous small dogs.

I've had multiple cats over many years (childhood pet, and a couple of cats as an adult) and like other cat owners, learned the slow blink technique naturally long before this paper was written.

Now I volunteer as a dog handler for a local rescue and interact with quite a few dogs (many of them with various forms of ptsd as they were all strays at one point) and after a lot of testing I'm also fairly certain that dogs interpret the slow-blink similarly to cats (basically as a signal that you mean them no harm, despite clearly being a predator because your eyes are front-facing), they are just much less likely to return it the way a cat will once it trusts you.

But I've seen lots of anecdotal personal evidence that it does also act like a calming and trust signal for dogs.

Staring at another, and sustained direct eye contact in particular, is a sign of aggression or distrust in many animals including humans. This is one of the reasons cats often seem to gravitate towards people who are allergic or dislike cats – their body language unintentionally communicates "I’m friendly and not a threat".

Anyone tried this with a stray cat? Wonder if it works before they get used to people.

It worked for me. I've tried it with feral cats who had essentially zero human interaction history, and I made great progress without involving food or other trust-making processes.

It's not a magic bullet but more of an amplifier. Cats probably use far many data points alongside to assess safety.

It’s worked for me with multiple strays, one of whom is no longer a stray. The other one who hangs around is still quite feral, but he has grown less skittish over time.

100% works. Staring or looking straight in the eyes is seen as hostile/threatening/a threat/a provocation

My car slow-blinks me while mauling my arm. What does that mean?

Perhaps that your car is a sentient 1958 Plymouth Fury ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_(1983_film)

A dog will show you happy attention by wagging its tail, going all over you happily , roll around and be excited.

A cat? Slow eye blink.

(it's funny, laugh!)

One of the more interesting things I've read about cats is that the tail swishing they do isn't - as some think - a sign of anger but rather indecision. You see it when it's a fight/flight situation but also if there's an open door on a rainy day; the animal wants to be out but also doesn't want to be wet.

The interesting supposition was that it was a physical manifestation that reflected an emotional state. That is to say a moment in balance - and for cats balance is corrected with their tails. I don't know if it's true but I kind of want it to be.

> A dog will show you happy attention by wagging its tail, going all over you happily , roll around and be excited.

Along with their humany eyes, this makes me sad for dogs. I feel like they've lost their animalness because some other species had other plans for them.

I really like animals that are like animals - and that us and them have to work it out.

Ooh now I miss my kitty

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