If I Fits, I Sits
What cat owners like you and me contribute to science
Meozwa hoomans,
On my quest to discover research on why cats love cardboard boxes so much, I have come across a research article that looks at how visual illusions affect cats. To cut a long research story short, cats can perceive shapes even if they are just illusions. We need to just somehow indicate a square on the floor and cats will sit inside it.
The study’s title “If I fits I sits” continues with “A citizen science investigation into illusory contour susceptibility in domestic cats (Felis silvestris catus)”. And the phrase citizen science is the interesting bit that we’ll take up in this month’s mewsletter.
Get your cardboard box 📦 ready, here’s your catnip for this month 🌿
Asking the public for help is a possibility for any researcher, especially if they cannot get the data in any other way. Like how would you get a room full of cats and do the trials? Erm, you don’t, which is why you would invite cititzen scientists with cats, i.e. interested people without a degree in your field but with cats, to help you out. In our study, 500 cat owners initially signed up for the trials, and in the end, 30 completed all trials. Among the trial participants were the following cats: Ash, Bloshka, Danae, Eleanor, Faleco, Misha, Olly, Stinky Valium, and Totoro (Smith, Chouinard, and Byosiere, 2021, p. 3).
Everyone can do science, and you don’t need a university degree to engage in research. I am serious, all you need is your interest and your knowing the how-to go on about it. If you have the chance to work on some serious science together with researchers, they will provide you with the necessary methods of how to do your research. They’ll tell you what to observe and how to observe it.
Our animal behaviourists wanted to find out if cats can perceive contours that are in fact just illusions. To do so, the researchers used the method called Kanizsa square visual illusion. This is easily explained by the image above, which is such a Kanizsa square visual illusion. We have got four Pacman like symbols in black and we perceive a square in white. The question now is what cats see, and the answer is that, just like humans, cats can see the square — and sit down inside it fully along the lines of “If I fits, I sits”.
The human citizen scientists worked with a booklet and symbols, like the Pacman, to be printed, all of which was provided by the researchers. The humans taped the symbols on the floor and observed what their cats did in several trials. So there is your what and your how-to.
Click on the button to read the scientific article: Smith, G. E., Chouinard, P. A., & Byosiere, S. E. (2021). If I fits I sits: A citizen science investigation into illusory contour susceptibility in domestic cats (Felis silvestris catus). Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 240, 105338. ⬇️
On a personal note, if you’d like to participate in a citizen science linguistics research, you can send me the catspeak words you come across. All I need is the word, the platform/medium where you found it, and the date. At this stage, I am just compiling word lists, I still have to see where in linguistics this will take me.
Catspeak Words
Here is my list of catspeak words that I came across in June. As usual, the meowphemes are inside <>. I found them on Instagram and in books.
purr machine
Fast & Purrious <purr>
purrrivate <purr>
meowmories <meow>
Good meowning everypawdy! < meow> <paw>
supurrvisor <purr>
catfirmation <cat>
emeowgency <meow>
pawmised land <paw>
their Royal Catnesses <cat>
meownager <meow>
Purride month <purr>
I sahre my life with a formidable an clawsome cat. Her arrival in my life was a meowmentous event. Purrplexed by her behaviour at times, she mastered the art of purrsuasion with purrsistence. She is a meowgical cat with strong purrsonality. Like a pawlitician she takes charge. She is a furbulous and furmidable, at times hissterically funny with cattitude, addition to my life. I am furtunate!