Some cats will point some strange skill points when they get along with the Blue Star people. For example, the rotating handle opens the door: I don’t know who I learned to open the drawer to find food when Mr. Car opened the door with this hand: Over time, even the locking seemed so thin: This cat could no longer control it, and most of these behaviors were learned slowly after the cat got along with humans. Do cats really observe human behavior and imitate it? Let’s take a look at an experiment from a research team from the University of Roland, Hungary, and found a cat called "Ebisu" in Aichi Prefecture, Japan.

Ebisu is so beautiful. Ebisu's owner is called fumi higaki. She is a dog trainer who is famous for her "DAID" learning method. This time, "DAID" will also be used to test Ebisu. Experimental method: Friend, let’s learn about the wisdom tree? What is "DAID"? In fact, it is "Do as I Do". When we were young, we heard of such behavior patterns in "The Tree of Wisdom". Simply put, it is "please do it like me, and I do it like you": This demonstration is the old standard DAID. The owner first does the action, such as stretching out a hand to touch an object, and sending the cat "Do it" at the same time; waiting for 20 seconds to see if the cat can repeat the owner's action; then the owner does another action to see if the cat can repeat it accurately again. Ebisu is a cat with a strong appetite. It is also because of this that his owner can use this as a driving force to teach Ebisu to learn human movements. Ebisu and Hiragaki Shi's certificate photo Before getting involved in this experiment, Hiragaki Shi and Ebisu had already conducted similar imitation learning, including: spinning in circles, touching a shaking toy with your hands, taking down a rubber band on the clothes hanger, pulling open the drawer, lying down, standing with your hind legs, etc. Pre-experiment: What? Even Meow has a mock exam? Before the experiment officially began, Ebisu still had 21 days to review and temporarily added two basic test contents: open the lid of the sliding plastic container and place the forearm on a book. In the basic test, our top student Ebisu Jun learned to slide the lid of the container once. However, facing the task of putting the entire forearm on the book, Ebisu was willing to condescend to give a paw at the beginning, and sat steadily and without moving at all. Until the owner put the book farther away, Ebisu walked forward in order to complete the task and placed his forearm on the book. During the formal experiment, Ebisu had to learn two new actions. So, can Ebisu do it? Experimental process and results: Will Ebisu succeed? The experiment officially began one night in December 2019. It should be noted that in March 2019, Ebisu was diagnosed with kidney disease. After September 2019, Ebisu's activity level and appetite have dropped significantly. Can Ebisu, the former foodie, regain her former style? The experiment was conducted in a pet store that Ebisu was familiar with. Ebisu sat on a 72cm tall table and faced with his owner Hiragaki Shi. 50 cm away from Ebishop, it is a cardboard box the size of a mobile phone box. Two new actions that Ebisu needs to learn are: touch the carton with your hands and rub the carton with your face. Ab, the owner and Ebisu respectively touched the carton with his hands and rubbed the carton with his hands. Researchers asked Ebisu to perform 18 repeated tests. It is time to show the experimental results. The experimental results show that Ebisu performed 81.2% of the imitation behavior. Two invalid actions were eliminated, and among the 16 effective actions, Ebisu successfully imitated 13 actions. Just from the perspective of action imitation, the statistical results were significant, and Ebisu was successful.

However, in the number of times Ebisu successfully imitated, there were 3 object errors. Simply put, it was supposed to rub the box with your face, but Ebisu only rubbed it on the desktop. Regarding whether Ebisu understands imitating specific objects, the statistical results show that it does not matter, that is, we do not know whether Ebisu knows whether he should complete the actions for specific objects. So... Do cats really imitate humans? From Ebisu's experiment, we saw a cat that seemed to really imitate humans. Although this is just a very simple action imitation, for a cat, first of all, you must know that what the owner needs is "imitation" rather than "expression". Secondly, you must correspond to the human structure that is not similar to it. Take a chestnut: A cat cannot understand human words. When you raise your hand and point forward, you must also understand that you are not trying to give him a way or let him smell it, but you need to imitate this action. At the same time, the cat also needs to know that your hand corresponds to TA's front foot before it can simulate the movement. So, Ebisu is really a very powerful cat! However, it is too early to conclude from this that cats can indeed imitate human movements. After all, Ebisu had received some training before, and I don’t know if this experiment can be reproduced on other cats. So when facing this problem, we can only wait and look forward to the next experiment with more repetitions~