You either love cats or you hate them. If you love them, then you'll be happy to know that, according to scientific research published in 2020, there is actually a way for you and your cat to communicate. According to the study, cat owners (and anyone else who wants to talk to their cats) can use slow blinks to communicate with their cats and build rapport with them.
Cats are fascinating creatures. While scientists are busy looking for ways to create hypoallergenic cats, others are busy learning how to prevent cats from their love of murdering small animals. Some people have even found themselves studying the way cats communicate with humans, and the results have paid off, with some even finding a way for you to talk to your cat.
According to a scientific study published in 2020, one thing humans can do to truly build rapport with cats is blink slowly. According to the researchers, they're not sure what the slow blinking exactly means, but cats seem to use it as some form of communication.
In fact, in many of the cases the scientists tested, the cats even returned the slow blink. It's an intriguing proposition, and it's likely to pave the way for more research into how we can better talk to our cats. But for now, we can only judge based on the results of this particular study.
The study focused on slow blinking as a way to talk to cats, using 21 cats from 14 different households. Once the cat has settled somewhere in the house, the owner will slowly blink at the cat. Researchers recorded the expressions of owners and cats simultaneously and found that cats were more likely to blink slowly after being blinked than otherwise.
Of course, slow blinking is not an effective way for humans to talk to cats, which is probably why most of us talk to them like humans. The researchers say they're also not sure what gave birth to this behavior in cats, or if it arises from humans' reaction to it, or if it means something else to the cats themselves.
But what we do know is that it seems to build a rapport with them, which means cat owners might want to try it the next time their cat settles into a comfortable spot next to their desk.
