Welcome to the latest installment of “Writer Fuel – cool real-world stories that might inspire your little writer heart. Check out our Writer Fuel page on the LimFic blog for more inspiration. Today:
Your cat is probably keeping track of where you are, even if your feline friend isn’t in the same room with you and can’t see you.
Scientists recently learned that domestic cats create “mental maps” that tell them where nearby humans are located, based on where sounds are coming from. The researchers tested cats by playing recordings of human voices calling the cats’ names; they then played those recordings again, only this time through a speaker in a different place, so that the same sounds came from farther away.
The cats acted surprised when the familiar voice came from a location that they didn’t expect, based on what they had already heard. This suggests that cats spatially orient their unseen human companions using audio cues — a cognitive ability that was previously unknown in felines.
