Cats are confident that they can squeeze through any opening, but openings that are too low make them somewhat doubtful of their liquidity.
Anyone can see for themselves that cats are liquid – there are plenty of photos and videos of cats squeezing through extremely narrow holes, crawling into extremely narrow cracks, and managing to lie down in extremely narrow pots and vases. Those who have their own cat can see all this in real life… Jokes aside, ten years ago physicist Marc-Antoine Farden (Marc-Antoine Fardin) from the Laboratory of Statistical Physics in Lyon even published an article on the fluidity of cats – in his calculations he used the so-called Deborah number (De), which shows the degree of fluidity of a material. The Deborah number depends on the ratio of the relaxation time of the material to the observation time; the higher the Deborah number, the less time the substance needs to spread, therefore, the more it resembles a liquid. If the Deborah number is very, very small, then we need a very, very long time to see how the material flows. In a sense, if we use the Deborah number, everything in the world is a liquid, even cats. We wrote that Farden received the Ig Nobel Prize for calculating the fluidity of cats.
Perhaps Peter Pongratz will also receive his Ig Nobel Prize (Péter Pongrácz) from the University of Budapest – his recent article in iScience is devoted to the question of whether cats understand that they are liquid. Although, in fact, this is not entirely true, and the word “liquid” appears only once in the article. To put it more correctly, the study is about how cats relate their own bodies to the holes through which they need to crawl. This task is not so simple from a cognitive point of view: you need to feel your own three dimensions, comparing them with what you see in front of you. We are not always aware of such mental procedures, although we instantly understand, seeing a door that is too low in front of us, that we need to bend down so as not to smash our forehead.
Several years ago, Pongrac conducted experiments with dogs that were separated from their owners by a partition with a hole – the owners called the dogs, and they had to squeeze through the hole. But the holes were different, and the dogs either immediately or after a short hesitation understood that if the hole was as wide as your chest, or twice as tall as you are at the withers, then you won’t be able to squeeze through it. The same experiment was conducted with cats (they had to go to the cats’ homes – those who study them know that it’s very difficult to persuade them to do anything in an unfamiliar laboratory). The owners lured them with toys or treats, and the cats had to go through a hole that was repeatedly made smaller either in height or width.
When the hole became smaller in height, the cats had doubts about whether it was worth climbing into it. But they still climbed in – even when the hole became half as tall as they were at the withers. Dogs, as was said above, also had doubts in such cases, but after some hesitation, they came to the conclusion that it was not worth trying. If the hole was made narrower, leaving the height constant, then the cats did not even doubt, but simply tried to squeeze through right away, and boldly stuck into the crack, even if it was half as wide as the cat.
In general, cats in some cases foresee that they may have problems getting through a hole, but this does not stop them from trying to get through. However, not every attempt ends in success. That is, cats do not so much know that they are liquid, as they are sure of it – but again, not liquid in general, but only in a certain dimension. Dogs and cats are anatomically different, and cats are indeed more flexible, and, probably, understanding some features of their own anatomy encourages them to boldly squeeze into cracks and containers that are inaccessible to less flexible dogs.
Source: www.nkj.ru
