Many would argue that cats are pretty intelligent but have you ever wondered if these felines can understand more than one human language? Or if they could understand human language at all?
That’s the question that got many netizens discussing on Twitter and here’s what they had to say about the topic:
Yesterday (Tuesday, 24th October), a netizen who goes by @meinmokhtar posted an NGL submission from an anonymous user. In the screenshot shown above, the user was curious to know if cats would be able to understand their owner’s language if they were adopted from their previous owner of another race.
This submission opened a discussion among netizens who shared their opinions, as well as experiences with their animal companions. Some argued that it would take time for pets to understand their new owner’s words or commands, especially if they’ve been trained to respond to certain words by their previous owners. Others said that language does not matter because cats would respond to their owners based on the tone of their voice and body language.
One netizen even shared that his friend’s cat apparently understood German and would not respond to any other language as the friend used to live there with his pet before moving back to Malaysia. Of course, there were also netizens who joked about cats understanding dialects rather than the standard language which would make it harder for new owners to train them.
The discussion obviously got us curious too. Can cats really understand human language? According to a published article by Animal Cognition in 2013, cats lack the cognitive ability to understand human languages but recognise when people speak to them.
However, in a study by French researchers in 2022, it was concluded that cats do understand human language if spoken to them in a specific tone. It seems that the subject is more complicated with no definite answer. Regardless of whether or not our furry friends can understand us, that has never stopped anyone from speaking to them as though they understood every word.
What are your thoughts on this?
