Faithful love? No! Cats do not need humans
Cat lovers must be strong now: Scientists at the University of Lincoln in the UK have used psychological tests to find that cats do not need their owners to feel safe. This clearly distinguishes them from dogs, which have shown a strong attachment to their confidant.
Is it official that a dog is a loyal friend and the cat is just an independent ghost? Can a cat not "love" a human?
The first conclusion of the British scientists Alice Potter and Daniel Simon Mills says 'no', as they now in the journal 'PLOS' explained. For their psychological tests, they used a method known since the 1970s to test the trust of infants to their mothers. A mother sits with her child in a room in which a stranger is present. The researchers then examined the behavior of the child when the mother left the room. Did the child go after the mother? Was it crying and happy when she came back? In that case, the child was considered "securely bound". Or it froze, but played on? As a result, they identified four attachment types: secure, uncertainly-avoidant, uncertain-ambivalent, or disorganized.
How do cats react?
But how would cats react? For this, 20 cats and their owners had to go to university. In the first case, the owners and their cats entered the room where a stranger was sitting. Or the cat was sent alone to the room with the stranger. Then the persons left the cat. No matter how - the cats meowed stronger when the owners left, but they did not show strong attachment hints. They did not stay close to the owner when he returned and were not too happy about it. Cats do not need people to feel safe, the scientists concluded.
Quite different was the result in the 'dog test'. Dogs took their bearings from the owners, sought refuge with them, and did not want to let them go in unfamiliar situations.
But before all cat lovers cry out - the scientists admitted that more tests were needed to investigate the relationship between cat and human. And maybe there's still some love for humans in cat psychology somewhere.
