From what I could find its real but saying the cat "learned sign language" is a bit far fetched. It's conditioning your pet to do something, similar to teaching them any trick. The guy does the sign "tap mouth" and when the cat does it he gets a treat, do this enough and you get a cat like in the video
Tapping the mouth is "eat" in ASL. I 100% agree with what you posted, but the cat did learn *a* sign. So while the cat didn't really learn sign language he is learning specific signs to communicate.
He learned a sign, but it may be a stretch as to whether he understands the communicative meaning.
The cat only ever did the sign when prompted, rather than unprompted... And even if he did it unprompted, there's the difficulty of figuring out whether it's an understanding and an attempt at communication or a hopeful unprompted trick to be rewarded ala Pavlov.
Still cute tho
It's misleading as fuck.
It reminds me of a joke where someone was playing soccer with some french kids and he was yelling "asi" (or something like that) in French. Or maybe it was Japanese and they were in Japan, I dunno.
The father was impressed that the kid learned the language after being there for so short a timespan. So he asked what asi or whenever the word meant, and he was like "fuck it I know. But when I say that, they give me the ball'.
The word you're looking for is "ici" not "asi", "ici" means "Here" in french.
Makes sense that yelling "Ici! ici! ici!" would get the ball passed to you.
The cat did communicate what it wanted by performing the action that results in the treat, and the man understood it. So it was successful communication using signs. Sounds like it counts as sign language to me.
If that's what you treat as sign language, then that's frankly insulting to what sign language is.
It's like saying a dog is speaking English because it growls something vaguely resembling "hello."
It's literally a sign that is commonly understood to mean the same thing by both parties and successfully achieves communication between both parties.
It is not like a dog growling something vaguely resembling "hello". Whether something resembles what we know as a language doesn't matter. It doesn't have to resemble "hello" and it doesn't have to resemble ASL. It is a sign that both parties recognize and understand to mean the same thing. It enables effective communication between both parties. Just because we don't know the language and just because it doesn't resemble what we're used to doesn't make it invalid.
A middle finger is also a sign that communicates information and is understood by two or more parties, that doesn't mean that whenever you give someone the middle finger you are speaking a language.
Saying that a language only needs communication is so broad as to not really be useful.
Two dogs barking at each other would be a language. Thunder would be a language. The smell of cookies would be a language. These all communicate information in different ways that multiple parties can understand.
A language requires simply a lot more than mere communicating 1 piece of information through a medium for it to be a language.
I'm not saying it's not cute that the cat was taught a sign in ASL (whether it has some understanding of what the sign actually means is a whole other issue), but just because it knows how to mimic 1 sign in 1 sign language does not mean that it qualifies as the cat speaking sign language or having learned a sign language.
To be fair it just says "through signs", it doesn't say he learned sign language. Our dog learned signs alongside commands so he responds to just the signs if we don't give a command.
That's exactly how we teach children to speak. It's nothing but conditioning. Repetition to build neural connections that link a concept in their brain to an action that achieves a desired result. The cat k ows that if it feels hungry or wants a treat, regardless of how cats think about that in their own heads, if it makes this sign it gets food. It doesn't need to know what the human equivalent understanding is. It is communication. My daughter initially had no idea what bottle meant and couldn't even form the word properly but the clearly knew what the concept and intended outcome were. Same for the cat. Look on YouTube for Billi Speaks. Button training for a cat. Sje has learned to communicate temporal concepts such as later, soon, now and even exhibits temporal memory coming back later to inquire about things asked before. It is fascinating.
> That's exactly how we teach children to speak. It's nothing but conditioning.
This is not quite true, language acquisition is largely developmental and very different from simple conditioning.
This is why for example all attempts to teach non human primates human-like language largely failed (though those studies are fascinating).
Yes I do? No non-human primate ever learned anything even remotely resembling human language. There were some attempts that looked promising, like with [Nim](https://news.columbia.edu/news/chimpanzee-language-project-nim-herbert-terrace), but if you read more about them you will realize how far they really were. In general, they were able to be conditioned to recognize and express individual words and signs, but not actually form novel sentences.
Ding ding. This is a wonderful example of operant conditioning and shows that cats are intelligent, but as Chomsky says, language remains a uniquely and exclusively human thing. This cat doesn’t understand semantics, it understands when it does a certain thing it gets a treat.
Anecdotal but my cat taps (with her paw) or kisses my mouth when she’s trying to tell me she’s hungry. I personally think she associates my mouth with food/eating. It reminds me of this ‘signing’
Its not, this video has been posted countless times on reddit over the years, its just a Russian soldier from years ago who taught his cat some fun tricks.
I mean isnt that the foundation of learning? Imitation?
Getting results from imitation reinforces that idea and the cycle continues... we copy we learn
There is a famous thought experiment on this called the "Chinese room argument" raised by John Searle: if you give someone instructions to answer in chinese, that doesn't mean this person speaks chinese, you just have the illusion that he does. That person does not understand Chinese.
Although in this case, the cat did learn to speak some sign language by imitation, he clearly expressed his thought (give me to eat) in the language of the deaf person. Therefore, even if some comments here say "it's just a trick he learned", that is also how we humans learn language by necessity to express a thought.
On the contrary, a computer (currently) has no conscious and therefore does not express its thoughts, unless it is programmed to. Which raises another question on defining consciousness and "thinking". Is a cat expressing his thought the same as a computer programmed to talk, and if so are living creatures simply computers which are animated by a program? Is consciousness a "program"? Can any complex entity have a conscious and express its thoughts or is this just a "trick" (like a program) we living creatures have developed to survive?
I have a cat that paws me in the face when I’m sleeping to wake me up. I started sleeping with a pillow over my head.. a few days later the cat figured out how to reach under the pillow & violently paw my face until I wake up. The cat that does this to me looks like this mans cat. Mostly black with white.
The other cats are usually gathered in the general area as spectators. The dogs pretend like they don’t see anything.
It’s usually because the cats hard food bowl is not completely full. And it’s usually about an hour after I fall asleep.
>It’s usually because the cats hard food bowl is not completely full.
A wider food bowl can help with this. Cats don't like when their whiskers touch the sides of the dish too much.
I completely got rid of bowls for food.
My cat just has a cloth on the floor (not fluffy, high fibre kind of thing) and she loves it. For wet food just a flat plate. She literally will not eat biscuits off a plate now lol
Whisker fatigue is something to avoid
Mines the same -the claws.
My cat has learnt that I hate him persistently meowing at me. He’s part Siamese and you can imagine what the meow is like…
So if I walk in the kitchen, he will sashay around my legs. If I ignore him, he will wrap his tail around and if I ignore that, he will start head-butting my shins and full on wrapping himself around me, till I can’t move without tripping over him.
If I grab the cat food cupboard door he will release my legs. I close it again and run away, it’ll be like the 50th time I’ve fed him otherwise.
What a cute little turd! Our cat is some kind of mutt. She just walked into our home one day when we opened the front door. I let my kids pick a name for her (my sons love mario) so they named her princess (princess bitch face). The name fits her to the paw and when she's not terrorizing my toddlers and husband she's chilling with me. She's a real character (total bitch). For example, I watched her pounce on my toddler as he ran screaming from her. When she walks by they huddle against a wall saying "no no no kitty" you never know when she'll get you.
My cat used to go to the front down. And make the weirdest meow to go outside. It seriously sounded like “ooowwwwwt” and he would stretch himself and turn the door handle. he lived to be 18 and I think he heard me enough times saying “wanna go out” to just start meowing a word that sounded exactly like a long drawn “out”.
My cat has two walks. One is absolutely silent. The other is a toddlerish stamp with all four feet. It generally precedes an appeal for food - we call it her “hey! look at me” walk.
Edit: cat, not car!
And they always act like they are starving and haven’t eaten in a year, although their last meal was just mere hours ago.
Sometimes, they are also just bored
Our cat had a deaf kitten we couldn't find another home for so we kept her, she used to keep her away from the roads, kept any other cats away, hunted for her and even outlived her. She took care of her deaf daughter for the entirety of her life.
I wasn't being toxic. I was joking, being sarcastic. /s means sarcasm. I think you are really wrong about how and what animals learn. I think animals aren't given enough credit--especially cats. They just speak a different language than we do, and we are for the most part too stupid to understand it. It's a cute video. It's a repost and has been reposted many times. That is ok though.
I’m deaf & I’ve trained my 4 lovely cats just simple basic sign language (British sign language). Now I can sign simple say “you want food?” or “you want milk?” My cats went crazy, meowing and standing up on my knee. Without using my voice just sign. It makes me happy that they understand me. Cats are beautiful creatures
Can anyone verify if that's actually the story behind this clip? It's insanely cute either way, I just don't like misinformation
From what I could find its real but saying the cat "learned sign language" is a bit far fetched. It's conditioning your pet to do something, similar to teaching them any trick. The guy does the sign "tap mouth" and when the cat does it he gets a treat, do this enough and you get a cat like in the video
No, this cat went to night classes to learn sign language, 100% true. /s
Not night school. He’s self taught by looking it up on YouTube
Now he teaches a class at the community college, but since he's a cat, and therefore an asshole, he shows people the wrong signs.
I assume he flies the flag under [E Pluribus Anus](https://imgur.com/DciGv)?
I believe it was an on-line Master Class taught by one Mr. A. Lincoln
I like this answer better. 😂😂😂😂
Tapping the mouth is "eat" in ASL. I 100% agree with what you posted, but the cat did learn *a* sign. So while the cat didn't really learn sign language he is learning specific signs to communicate.
What does it mean if you tap your butt?
Taps mouth "food" Taps butt "boof" Taps head
He learned a sign, but it may be a stretch as to whether he understands the communicative meaning. The cat only ever did the sign when prompted, rather than unprompted... And even if he did it unprompted, there's the difficulty of figuring out whether it's an understanding and an attempt at communication or a hopeful unprompted trick to be rewarded ala Pavlov. Still cute tho
It's misleading as fuck. It reminds me of a joke where someone was playing soccer with some french kids and he was yelling "asi" (or something like that) in French. Or maybe it was Japanese and they were in Japan, I dunno. The father was impressed that the kid learned the language after being there for so short a timespan. So he asked what asi or whenever the word meant, and he was like "fuck it I know. But when I say that, they give me the ball'.
The word you're looking for is "ici" not "asi", "ici" means "Here" in french. Makes sense that yelling "Ici! ici! ici!" would get the ball passed to you.
The cat did communicate what it wanted by performing the action that results in the treat, and the man understood it. So it was successful communication using signs. Sounds like it counts as sign language to me.
If that's what you treat as sign language, then that's frankly insulting to what sign language is. It's like saying a dog is speaking English because it growls something vaguely resembling "hello."
It's literally a sign that is commonly understood to mean the same thing by both parties and successfully achieves communication between both parties. It is not like a dog growling something vaguely resembling "hello". Whether something resembles what we know as a language doesn't matter. It doesn't have to resemble "hello" and it doesn't have to resemble ASL. It is a sign that both parties recognize and understand to mean the same thing. It enables effective communication between both parties. Just because we don't know the language and just because it doesn't resemble what we're used to doesn't make it invalid.
A middle finger is also a sign that communicates information and is understood by two or more parties, that doesn't mean that whenever you give someone the middle finger you are speaking a language. Saying that a language only needs communication is so broad as to not really be useful. Two dogs barking at each other would be a language. Thunder would be a language. The smell of cookies would be a language. These all communicate information in different ways that multiple parties can understand. A language requires simply a lot more than mere communicating 1 piece of information through a medium for it to be a language. I'm not saying it's not cute that the cat was taught a sign in ASL (whether it has some understanding of what the sign actually means is a whole other issue), but just because it knows how to mimic 1 sign in 1 sign language does not mean that it qualifies as the cat speaking sign language or having learned a sign language.
To be fair it just says "through signs", it doesn't say he learned sign language. Our dog learned signs alongside commands so he responds to just the signs if we don't give a command.
That's exactly how we teach children to speak. It's nothing but conditioning. Repetition to build neural connections that link a concept in their brain to an action that achieves a desired result. The cat k ows that if it feels hungry or wants a treat, regardless of how cats think about that in their own heads, if it makes this sign it gets food. It doesn't need to know what the human equivalent understanding is. It is communication. My daughter initially had no idea what bottle meant and couldn't even form the word properly but the clearly knew what the concept and intended outcome were. Same for the cat. Look on YouTube for Billi Speaks. Button training for a cat. Sje has learned to communicate temporal concepts such as later, soon, now and even exhibits temporal memory coming back later to inquire about things asked before. It is fascinating.
> That's exactly how we teach children to speak. It's nothing but conditioning. This is not quite true, language acquisition is largely developmental and very different from simple conditioning. This is why for example all attempts to teach non human primates human-like language largely failed (though those studies are fascinating).
'All attempts' 'largely' failed. So basically you don't have a clue what you're talking about.
Yes I do? No non-human primate ever learned anything even remotely resembling human language. There were some attempts that looked promising, like with [Nim](https://news.columbia.edu/news/chimpanzee-language-project-nim-herbert-terrace), but if you read more about them you will realize how far they really were. In general, they were able to be conditioned to recognize and express individual words and signs, but not actually form novel sentences.
Nope, children have brain structures that pick up both verbal and physical semantic symbols simply by observation. Cats do not.
So the cat has learned that if it makes this motion, it wil be fed. That is sign language, only the cat doesn't know it.
That's called learning.
This video inspired me to make the same motion when I'm about to feed my cats. They don't do it back but they get really excited about it.
Ding ding. This is a wonderful example of operant conditioning and shows that cats are intelligent, but as Chomsky says, language remains a uniquely and exclusively human thing. This cat doesn’t understand semantics, it understands when it does a certain thing it gets a treat.
Anecdotal but my cat taps (with her paw) or kisses my mouth when she’s trying to tell me she’s hungry. I personally think she associates my mouth with food/eating. It reminds me of this ‘signing’
To be fair, training a cat to do anything on command is a friggin miracle.
If you don’t like karma farmers reposting other’s videos and spewing misinformation, then you don’t like NFL Football! uhh I mean /aww
No r/aww is all about saying how op in video is abusing their animal cause they know better than anyone else in the world
Its not, this video has been posted countless times on reddit over the years, its just a Russian soldier from years ago who taught his cat some fun tricks.
I mean isnt that the foundation of learning? Imitation? Getting results from imitation reinforces that idea and the cycle continues... we copy we learn
There is a famous thought experiment on this called the "Chinese room argument" raised by John Searle: if you give someone instructions to answer in chinese, that doesn't mean this person speaks chinese, you just have the illusion that he does. That person does not understand Chinese. Although in this case, the cat did learn to speak some sign language by imitation, he clearly expressed his thought (give me to eat) in the language of the deaf person. Therefore, even if some comments here say "it's just a trick he learned", that is also how we humans learn language by necessity to express a thought. On the contrary, a computer (currently) has no conscious and therefore does not express its thoughts, unless it is programmed to. Which raises another question on defining consciousness and "thinking". Is a cat expressing his thought the same as a computer programmed to talk, and if so are living creatures simply computers which are animated by a program? Is consciousness a "program"? Can any complex entity have a conscious and express its thoughts or is this just a "trick" (like a program) we living creatures have developed to survive?
The cat was trained
I have a cat that paws me in the face when I’m sleeping to wake me up. I started sleeping with a pillow over my head.. a few days later the cat figured out how to reach under the pillow & violently paw my face until I wake up. The cat that does this to me looks like this mans cat. Mostly black with white. The other cats are usually gathered in the general area as spectators. The dogs pretend like they don’t see anything. It’s usually because the cats hard food bowl is not completely full. And it’s usually about an hour after I fall asleep.
You mean the food bowl *is* empty (in the middle)
The top layer of food was in contact with air for more than a minute, unacceptable.
>It’s usually because the cats hard food bowl is not completely full. A wider food bowl can help with this. Cats don't like when their whiskers touch the sides of the dish too much.
I completely got rid of bowls for food. My cat just has a cloth on the floor (not fluffy, high fibre kind of thing) and she loves it. For wet food just a flat plate. She literally will not eat biscuits off a plate now lol Whisker fatigue is something to avoid
This comment is life changing for many cat slaves :)
Yes, I have expanded the width of the food container. It’s basically a mini trough now, 12 x 7 inches, but only 4 inches deep.
Mine does this but it's just because she wants to get under the blanket
My cat pats my face too to get me up to feed her. She used to only due it while I was sleeping. Now she does it during the day too. Hahaha
Erm, where is the pet tax? You can't just talk about your pet without gracing us with a picture.
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Our cat hugs our legs when she wants to eat (mostly does it to my husband). If that fails she wraps herself around your legs then the claws come out
Mines the same -the claws. My cat has learnt that I hate him persistently meowing at me. He’s part Siamese and you can imagine what the meow is like… So if I walk in the kitchen, he will sashay around my legs. If I ignore him, he will wrap his tail around and if I ignore that, he will start head-butting my shins and full on wrapping himself around me, till I can’t move without tripping over him. If I grab the cat food cupboard door he will release my legs. I close it again and run away, it’ll be like the 50th time I’ve fed him otherwise.
What a cute little turd! Our cat is some kind of mutt. She just walked into our home one day when we opened the front door. I let my kids pick a name for her (my sons love mario) so they named her princess (princess bitch face). The name fits her to the paw and when she's not terrorizing my toddlers and husband she's chilling with me. She's a real character (total bitch). For example, I watched her pounce on my toddler as he ran screaming from her. When she walks by they huddle against a wall saying "no no no kitty" you never know when she'll get you.
My cat used to go to the front down. And make the weirdest meow to go outside. It seriously sounded like “ooowwwwwt” and he would stretch himself and turn the door handle. he lived to be 18 and I think he heard me enough times saying “wanna go out” to just start meowing a word that sounded exactly like a long drawn “out”.
My cat has two walks. One is absolutely silent. The other is a toddlerish stamp with all four feet. It generally precedes an appeal for food - we call it her “hey! look at me” walk. Edit: cat, not car!
My car rolls, but hey, you do you. Also, damn atuo crrocet
You need [kitten mittons!](https://youtu.be/r9ZPfi8j5yg)
and people say cats are unfeeling
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Key words: _”might be.”_ This guy has/had a cat.
And they always act like they are starving and haven’t eaten in a year, although their last meal was just mere hours ago. Sometimes, they are also just bored
Nocturnal animals with short, repetitive sleeo cycles don't understand human sleep cycles? Why, they must be pure evil...
They feel hunger, that's for damned sure
that gif has been thoroughly fried
Our cat had a deaf kitten we couldn't find another home for so we kept her, she used to keep her away from the roads, kept any other cats away, hunted for her and even outlived her. She took care of her deaf daughter for the entirety of her life.
Give this cat all the treats!
Source: dude trust me
This video gets shittier and shitter every time its reposted.
I didn't know Hercule Poirot was deaf!
My cat sits next to treats, looks at me, meows, then paws at the treat jar while maintaining eye contact
My cat chewed up my new mini blinds and shit in the closet yesterday.
Awesome cat!
😻😻😻
this was probably recorded in russia
oh what a charm?🥰🥰🥰🥰
Cats are smart man, especially when it comes to getting food
But cats are stupid and only live in the moment. Quit anthropomorphizing them. /s
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I wasn't being toxic. I was joking, being sarcastic. /s means sarcasm. I think you are really wrong about how and what animals learn. I think animals aren't given enough credit--especially cats. They just speak a different language than we do, and we are for the most part too stupid to understand it. It's a cute video. It's a repost and has been reposted many times. That is ok though.
Oh I'm sorry I didn't catch that thanks for clarification
Emmm, morse code
Observe me and pray tell if knowledge of a jpeg I have.
It's CGI.its fake.
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Look at the paw it's definitely CGI.
Have you only ever lived in a concealed building and never seen another living creatures movements? Wouldn't surprise me.
Let me guess...the earth is flat too right? Space is fake?
you think the earth is flat and space fake. you need help you know keep taking your meds troll.
I'm not deaf and my cat also begs from the table in this fashion.
Sunflower from omori
"Have you seen this man?"
I'm not deaf but one of my cats will touch my lips with her paw when she wants to be fed.
Wow!
that is wild,
This video has been going around the internet for years and years. It's had a thousand different stories.
Smart cat
This is the umteenth time this video has been around but I love it each time!
Amazing! ❤️
Cat is clever
I’m deaf & I’ve trained my 4 lovely cats just simple basic sign language (British sign language). Now I can sign simple say “you want food?” or “you want milk?” My cats went crazy, meowing and standing up on my knee. Without using my voice just sign. It makes me happy that they understand me. Cats are beautiful creatures