Cats might sometimes seem aloof, contrary and utterly nonplussed by humans, but it turns out that that might not be the full story.
Researchers said they have found that, like children and dogs, cats form emotional attachments to their caregivers including something known as “secure attachment” — a situation in which the presence of a caregiver helps them to feel secure, calm, safe and comfortable enough to explore their environment.
“Despite fewer studies, research suggests we may be underestimating cats’ sociocognitive abilities,” the authors of the study wrote.
The study, published in the journal Current Biology by researchers at Oregon State University in the US, involved owners and their kittens taking part in a simple exercise.
Each owner spent two minutes with their kitten, left the room for two minutes and then returned for a two-minute reunion.
The behavior of 70 kittens was monitored throughout.
The results showed that 64 percent of the animals appeared less stressed during the reunion with their owner than during the separation and that during the reunion, they showed a balance of roaming around and being in contact with their owner — a response that the team said was evidence of secure attachment.
The authors said that the remaining 36 percent of the kittens showed hallmarks of “insecure attachment” — remaining stressed upon reunion, with the majority seeking cuddles and the others either avoiding contact or appearing conflicted about what to do next.
A similar split in secure versus insecure attachment style was seen in 38 adult cats, and the team said that such a split has also been seen in previous research involving children and dogs with their caregivers.
Additional experiments showed that subsequent training and socialization of a subgroup of the kittens had little, if any, effect on the attachment type.
That suggests that, while such measures might influence the development of an attachment style to start with, once established such styles are pretty well stable, the researchers said.
“This may suggest that heritable factors, such as temperament, also influence attachment style and could contribute to its stability,” they wrote.
However, Daniel Mills, an expert in veterinary behavioral medicine from the University of Lincoln who has previously studied human-cat relationships, said the research has flaws, including that the team did not explore other possible types of bonds and did not repeat their experiments with strangers.
That means that the cats might have been responding more generally to social support from human presence, rather than showing attachment to a particular individual, he said.
“At the moment, as far as we can tell, responses around the owner that look like attachment are often largely the result of previous reinforcement,” he added.
While Mills added that kittens show attachment to their mother, he said that it remains unclear whether they form a similar attachment to their owners.
“I think cats do emotionally bond with their owners. I just don’t think that, at present, we have any convincing evidence that this is a form of psychological attachment in the normal psychological sense,” he said.
Lauren Finka of Nottingham Trent University agreed.
“For species that spend a large proportion of their time in proximity to specific humans, it can be very advantageous to form bonds with them,” she said. “However, unlike children and potentially dogs, it is less probable that cats have an innate need to form strong, secure attachments to their caregiver, particularly as adults — hence signs of this are more likely rooted in factors like their personality, early socialization and how we keep them.”
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