Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain Stuff Lauren Vogel bomb here. It's common knowledge that if an empty box of any size is left unattended and a cat finds it, that cat will sit inside of it. Tiny cats and large boxes, large cats and tiny boxes. It doesn't matter, as the saying goes, if I fits, I sits, and it doesn't seem to even have to be a box. It turns out that any
rectangle will do. A piece of paper, a laptop, of anything rectangular seems to light up that box sitting instinct in house cats. In the Twitter hashtag cat square highlighted this cat quirk. I'm merely taping an empty square on the floor was enough to lower a cat to sit or lie down inside of it. A couple of years later, this hashtag would help animal psychology researcher Gabriella Smith of Hunter College, City, University of New York a construct an
experiment to gauge cat cognition. In April one, the journal Applied Animal Behavior Science published her research entitled if I fits I Sits? A Citizen science investigation into illusory contour susceptibility in domestic cats. The Smith had seen hashtag cats square on Twitter and knew that cats would sit inside a two D square made of tape, not just inside a three D box. For the article of this episode
is based on how stuff Work. Spoke with Smith, she said, so, then the question became does this square actually have to be there? When we ask what is this animal seeing? People think of using dogs because they're so easily trained, But cats are the perfect candidate because we already know they will sit in a two D square. Not only to cats not have to be trained to do this, they don't even have to come into a lab to do it. A cat owners could easily take shapes to
the floor and record their cat's reactions. Thus, the first cat cognition experiment to use citizen scientists was born. And what better timing than during the COVID nineteen pandemic. Smith put out the call for volunteers via Twitter in June of Much of the world was on lockdown to some degree, and cat owners were looking for something, anything, really to do in their homes. Plus, Smith notes cats performed best
at home in the lab, they wouldn't behave naturally. She designed the experiment so that the humans could gather cat data over six days. Participants were given templates to print out, a square to tape to the floor, and a set of four pac mans, as Smith calls them, that could make an illusory square. These pac man's are circles that each have a ninety degree wedge cut out, But when you arrange them at the corners of an imaginary square, with the empty wedges or pac man mouths pointed inward,
they formed the four corners of the imaginary square. Scientifically, this is called a kanitsa square, which means that pieces of an image are constructing a complete image in our brains. Our minds see an image in this case of a square in the negative space, our eyes connect the dots. If you face the pac man mouths away from each other, we don't perceive any significant shape. But would cats see
the same things? Smith went into the experiment with frankly low expectations and an open mind that she was truly curious to know the answer to her question, but will cats sit in the square that isn't really there? She had no preconceived ideas what the cats might choose to do. She says that this was helpful in designing the experiment, as her biases for one shape or another weren't in play. She said, I was lucky I had any participants at all,
given how cats are. She gathered data over the summer of with participant humans sending in five minute videos of the shapes on the floor. If the cat positioned its body within any of the shapes for at least three seconds, it counted as a data point. Of course, cats are cats. Sometimes the cat would saunter through the video without sitting
at all. A Smith said, I watched a lot of empty videos as she recruited five DRED participants, and thirty were able to complete the entire six day sequence of tests. Of those, nine cats chose at least one of the shapes by sitting inside of it with all four feet for at least three seconds. Though the data set is small, cats did indeed choose the kanitsa square illusion as often as they chose the complete square that was taped on
the floor. They chose both of these more often than the non shape made by the pac man's that we're facing away from each other a while. This was Smith's first time using citizen scientists to gather data. She since been involved in another half dozen citizen science studies with dogs in the Animal Behavior in Conservation program at Hunter College. She notes that you don't have to have the cleverest animal in the world to participate in projects like this.
You just have to follow the instructions then let your pet do its thing or not. It's all data science. This research might seem pretty low stakes, but it offers new insight into animal cognition and psychology. We now know that cats can connect the dots and see a square that isn't there. It's also a springboard for more potential research.
Smith said, we see videos from zoos of large cats sitting in boxes, which makes sense because it's safe, like a cave or den, But it begs the question, what a wildcat sit in the outline of a square or a kinitz As square that isn't a square at all. This is the fun part of science, asking questions and devising ways to learn the answers, and then letting those
answers inspire new questions. Today's episode is based on the article I five Fit si sits The Science behind Cats Sitting in Squares on House to works dot com, written by Kristen hall Geisler. The brain Stuff is production of I Heart Radio in partnership with how stuff Works dot Com, and it's produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.