The bond between cats and their owners turns out to be far more intense than imagined, especially for cat aficionado women and their affection reciprocating felines, suggests a new study.
Cats attach to humans, and particularly women, as social partners, and it's not just for the sake of obtaining food, according to the new research, which has been accepted for publication in the journal Behavioural Processes.
The study is the first to show in detail that the dynamics underlying cat-human relationships are nearly identical to human-only bonds, with cats sometimes even becoming a furry "child" in nurturing homes.
"Food is often used as a token of affection, and the ways that cats and humans relate to food are similar in nature to the interactions seen between the human caregiver and the pre-verbal infant," co-author Jon Day, a Waltham Centre for Pet Nutrition researcher, told Discovery News. "Both cat and human infant are, at least in part, in control of when and what they are fed!"
For the study, led by Kurt Kotrschal of the Konrad Lorenz Research Station and the University of Vienna, the researchers videotaped and later analyzed interactions between 41 cats and their owners over lengthy four-part periods. Each and every behavior of both the cat and owner was noted. Owner and cat personalities were also assessed in a separate test. For the cat assessment, the authors placed a stuffed owl toy with large glass eyes on a floor so the feline would encounter it by surprise.
The researchers determined that cats and their owners strongly influenced each other, such that they were each often controlling the other's behaviors. Extroverted women with young, active cats enjoyed the greatest synchronicity, with cats in these relationships only having to use subtle cues, such as a single upright tail move, to signal desire for friendly contact.
While cats have plenty of male admirers, and vice versa, this study and others reveal that women tend to interact with their cats -- be they male or female felines -- more than men do.
"In response, the cats approach female owners more frequently, and initiate contact more frequently (such as jumping on laps) than they do with male owners," co-author Manuela Wedl of the University of Vienna told Discovery News, adding that "female owners have more intense relationships with their cats than do male owners."
Cats also seem to remember kindness and return the favors later. If owners comply with their feline's wishes to interact, then the cat will often comply with the owner's wishes at other times. The cat may also "have an edge in this negotiation," since owners are usually already motivated to establish social contact.
[. . .]
"A relationship between a cat and a human can involve mutual attraction, personality compatibility, ease of interaction, play, affection and social support," co-author Dorothy Gracey of the University of Vienna explained. "A human and a cat can mutually develop complex ritualized interactions that show substantial mutual understanding of each other's inclinations and preferences."
They're cats. They're animals that spend their whole lives with us and remain total mysteries. They have the body parts of miniature lions and tigers. They're beasts, albeit domesticated ones. They carry out extravagent licking rituals. They pretend not to hear us when we call. One of them snores. They are every bit as successful from a Darwinian point of view as we are: 21st century survivors. Most interestingly, they live with us. So what merits attention isn't that they're special animals, but rather that animals are special, and two of them share their mysterious ways with us.
The two planets are part of a four-planet system dubbed KOI-730. They circle their sun-like parent star every 9.8 days at exactly the same orbital distance, one permanently about 60 degrees ahead of the other. In the night sky of one planet, the other world must appear as a constant, blazing light, never fading or brightening.
Gravitational "sweet spots" make this possible. When one body (such as a planet) orbits a much more massive body (a star), there are two Lagrange points along the planet's orbit where a third body can orbit stably. These lie 60 degrees ahead of and 60 degrees behind the smaller object. For example, groups of asteroids called Trojans lie at these points along Jupiter's orbit.
In theory, matter in a disc of material around a newborn star could coalesce into so-called "co-orbiting" planets, but no one had spotted evidence of this before. "Systems like this are not common, as this is the only one we have seen," says Jack Lissauer of NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. Lissauer and colleagues describe the KOI-730 system in a paper submitted to the Astrophysical Journal (arxiv.org/abs/1102.0543).
Richard Gott and Edward Belbruno at Princeton University say we may even have evidence of the phenomenon in our own cosmic backyard. The moon is thought to have formed about 50 million years after the birth of the solar system, from the debris of a collision between a Mars-sized body and Earth. Simulations suggest the impactor, dubbed Theia, must have come in at a low speed. According to Gott and Belbruno, this could only have happened if Theia had originated in a leading or trailing Lagrange point along Earth's orbit. The new finds "show the kind of thing we imagined can happen", Gott says.
Will KOI-730's co-orbiting planets collide to form a moon someday? "That would be spectacular," says Gott. That may be so, but simulations by Bob Vanderbei at Princeton suggest the planets will continue to orbit in lockstep with each other for the next 2.22 million years at least.
About one-third of the ~1200 transiting planet candidates detected in the first four months of Kepler data are members of multiple candidate systems. There are 115 targets with two candidate transiting planets, 45 with three, 8 with four, and one each with five and six. We characterize herein the dynamical properties of these candidate multi-planet systems. The distribution of observed period ratios shows that the vast majority of candidate pairs are neither in nor near low-order mean motion resonances. Nonetheless, there are small but statistically significant excesses of candidate pairs both in resonance and spaced slightly too far apart to be in resonance, particularly near the 2:1 resonance. We find that virtually all candidate systems are stable, as tested by numerical integrations (assuming a nominal mass-radius relationship). Several considerations strongly suggest that the vast majority of these multi-candidate systems are true planetary systems. Using the observed multiplicity frequencies, we find that a single population that matches the higher multiplicities generally underpredicts the number of singly-transiting systems. We provide constraints on the true multiplicity and mutual inclination distribution of the multi-candidate systems, revealing a population of systems with multiple small planets with low (1-5 degree) mutual inclinations. In all, multi-transiting systems from Kepler provide a large and rich dataset that can be used to powerfully test theoretical predictions of the formation and evolution of planetary systems.
There have been allegations that the Shia majority in Bahrain enjoys Iranian backing, so that demonstrators in the island kingdom may not ultimately be seeking to build a democracy. How accurate are suspicions of an external element to these protests?
In my view, what we’re seeing is an allergic reaction to the word “Shia”. The only external element here is the inspiration the protesters in Manama have gained from uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, and even from the Iranian disturbances that followed the disputed 2009 election.
These protests in Bahrain are purely about democracy, rule of law and human rights.
Most of the protesters are Shia – do you see their actions as somehow religious in tone?
No, this story can’t be reduced to a Sunni-versus-Shia narrative.
There’s no doubt that Shia concerns have been the main engine of rebellion in Bahrain over the past two decades. Shia Muslims make more than 70 per cent of the population, and it’s generally accepted that they have faced discrimination in a country ruled by a Sunni dynasty.
However, many Sunni Muslims have taken part in the unrest alongside the Shia. So it’s not a religion-based protest. It’s all about rule of law and asking the administration to be accountable to its people.
From the start, the demonstration was organised by a group of young people using social media networks. It isn’t even clear whether they were Shia or Sunni.
They began by pushing for a constitutional monarchy. In other words, they were demanding a restriction in the absolute power of kings, not the dismantling of the system.
Since the bloodshed, however, the demands have changed, with some calling for an end to the entire system, others participation in the reform process, and the launch of a national dialogue.
How do Shia Bahrainis view Iran?
They are not necessarily fans of the regime in Tehran, and it’s very hard to conclude that they’re looking for an Iran-style Islamic republic.
Tehran likes to pretend to be a role model, but in the case of Bahrain there’s no evidence to suggest this is well-received. Of the six senior Shia figures in Bahrain – all of whom have supported the protests – the two leading figures, Ayatollah Sheikh Isa Ahmad Ghassem and Sheikh Ali Salman, are regarded as moderates who oppose hardline clerics. Last year, Ghassem was criticised by the Bahraini opposition for urging people to vote in a parliamentary election.
There are also many families of Iranian origin in Bahrain, but as they came from southern parts of Iran, they include Sunnis as well as Shia.
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