“Did We Find a Copycat? ‘Do As I Do’ in a Domestic Cat (Felis Catus)”, 2020-09-18 (; backlinks; similar):
This study shows evidence of a domestic cat (Felis catus) being able to successfully learn to reproduce human-demonstrated actions based on the ‘Do as I Do’ paradigm. The subject was trained to reproduce a small set of familiar actions on command “Do it!” before the study began.
To test feature-contingent behavioral similarity and control for stimulus enhancement, our test consisted of a modified version of the two-action procedure, combined with the ‘Do as I Do’ paradigm. Instead of showing two different actions on an object to different subjects, we applied a within-subject design and showed the two actions to the same subject in separate trials.
We show evidence that a well-socialized companion cat was able to reproduce actions demonstrated by a human model by reproducing two different actions that were demonstrated on the same object. Our experiment provides the first evidence that the ‘Do as I Do’ paradigm can be applied to cats, suggesting that the ability to recognize behavioral similarity may fall within the range of the socio-cognitive skills of this species.
The ability of reproducing the actions of a heterospecific human model in well-socialized cats may pave the way for future studies addressing cats’ imitative skills.