Science confirms that cats are assholes

Admit it, cat owners. This is not a surprise:

Cats recognise their owners' voices but never evolved to care, says study

Any cat owner will tell you that although they are sometimes kept as pets, felines are beholden to no one.

A new study from the University of Japan has confirmed this, showing that although pet cats are more than capable of recognising their owner’s voice they choose to ignore them.

The study tested cats in their own homes by playing them recordings of strangers and their owners calling their names. The cats' body language revealed that they did distinguish their owner's voice from the other. But they couldn't be bothered to get up and do anything about it.

The scientists suggest that this is due to the evolutionary history of cats, which haven't been selected for thousands of generations to attend to human commands. What the authors of the study seem to be more confused by - as am I - is the human side of the equation:

The study concludes by observing that “the behavioural aspect of cats that cause their owners to become attached to them are still undetermined.”

In other words: so why the heck do people like them anyway?


Three cats ignoring Flickr user Virany.