By Marc Abrahams, Improbable
Research
Further insight, in this study, on what cats have in sight:
“Cats and Illusory Motion,”Rasmus Bååth [pictured here],Takeharu Seno, Akiyoshi Kitaoka, Psychology, vol. 5, 2014, pp.
1131-1134. The authors, at Lund University, Sweden, Kyushu University,
Japan, and Ritsumeikan University, Japan, report:
“Many cat owners have probably looked into their cat’s eyes and wondered how the world looks from its perspective….
We present the first evidence that cats experience visual illusions and that a non-human animal can see illusory motion.
In three videos we show cats reacting with hunting behavior when watching the Rotating Snakes illusion.
This is taken to mean that cats see illusory motion in this image due to the propensity of cats to pursue movement. This is further supported by a survey where 29% of the respondents answered that their cat reacted to the illusion.
A number of preferential looking experiments were also indicative of cats experiencing the illusion, but not conclusively so.”
Here is the video:
(Thanks
to investigator Rolf Hut for bringing this to our attention.)
BONUS (possibly related): The 2014 Ig Nobel Prize-winning study “Seeing Jesus in toast: Neural and
behavioral correlates of face pareidolia“