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So, about cats
Apr. 3rd, 2012 10:32 pmJust recently I got to see this video showing big cats reacting to mirrors placed and held in front of their cages.
It's pretty obvious that this is the first time these cats had seen mirrors. If we can extrapolate from housecats (and I'm going to go right on ahead and assume you can), I'd expect them to have a fairly strong reaction for a few days when they first noticed the mirror, followed by it quickly toning down, with them ignoring the mirror completely as soon as they figured out the cat's not real.
What's interesting to me is not the mirrors, but the spiel they give before showing the mirrors where they talk about why cats groom and how often cats groom and they joke about how since cats are so "vain" they wanted to see how they reacted to seeing themselves in a mirror.
Obviously it's not meant to be a scientific, educational lecture. It's just a little bit of patter so we can enjoy the video. I got that.
But it still interested me that although 5 out of the 11 pre-mirror clips of big cat grooming they showed were of social grooming, "social bonds" was not mentioned as a reason cats groom. Temperature regulation and pest control were mentioned, but not forming and maintaining relationships.
( This is not very interesting )
It's pretty obvious that this is the first time these cats had seen mirrors. If we can extrapolate from housecats (and I'm going to go right on ahead and assume you can), I'd expect them to have a fairly strong reaction for a few days when they first noticed the mirror, followed by it quickly toning down, with them ignoring the mirror completely as soon as they figured out the cat's not real.
What's interesting to me is not the mirrors, but the spiel they give before showing the mirrors where they talk about why cats groom and how often cats groom and they joke about how since cats are so "vain" they wanted to see how they reacted to seeing themselves in a mirror.
Obviously it's not meant to be a scientific, educational lecture. It's just a little bit of patter so we can enjoy the video. I got that.
But it still interested me that although 5 out of the 11 pre-mirror clips of big cat grooming they showed were of social grooming, "social bonds" was not mentioned as a reason cats groom. Temperature regulation and pest control were mentioned, but not forming and maintaining relationships.
( This is not very interesting )
