This cat looks really cool beating the ball in cup trick every time. There is only one way he achieves this. It’s a combination of training and the domestic cats super hearing. You’ll see the owner bounce the ball before he does the trick. This makes a sound. It keys the cat’s sense of hearing. After the owner moves the cups around, the cat quickly places his paw over the correct cup.
I think speed is important because the ball is still moving around under the cup, creating sound, after the cups have stopped moving. The cat hears the sound and points out the correct cup. There is a slight delay on occasion because cats do take a bit of time to process thoughts. The training element comes in to ensure the cat learns to point to the cup where there is the sound of the ball moving. This would have been achieved through regular positive reinforcement training sessions.
Cat has skillz 😳 https://t.co/YKL7xQOAWG
— Jack Phan (@JackPhan) January 27, 2019
I have embedded two videos of the same subject because one may go blank and the Twitter one is longer than the YouTube one. It is another example of domestic cat training.
I guess we all know now that cats can be trained. It just takes a bit longer than for dogs.
It is a great video and explanation. Good deduction. Also, maybe cats take longer to train because they’re constantly asking themselves “Why am I doing this?”.