Like a cat doesn’t know it’s a cat. It doesn’t look at another cat and think “oh a cat”.
The worst part of this post is I’m not even high
doesn’t look at another cat and think “oh a cat”.
Well surely they know “my species” and “prey” and “big scary”
This is human chauvinism. Animals know what’s going on. You’re not using the ultra top level human parts of your brain as often as you think you are.
I’m talking a lot with complex sentences, which I think is the most human part.
Eh, this isn’t as true as you think. We know animals recognize their own species, and recognize different kinds of prey or edible plants and also predators. What i find weird is that they probably don’t classify things like we do, because they don’t have language to do it with. Are a wolf and a deer conceptualized similarly in the minds of either? They have more in common than a deer and a tree or a wolf and a snake, but they don’t have a way to know or think that.
What i find weird is that they probably don’t classify things like we do, because they don’t have language to do it with
This is the part I have much more trouble with. Since I think in words I don’t know how a creature can think and distinguish between things without language. The very concept of thoughts without language is bizarre to me.
Some people do think non-linguistically. It’s all concepts, no real words to bind them with. It’s bizarre to me too, I think in full sentences, sometimes paragraphs, hoe can you not even have words.
supposedly, they conceptualize in pictures/images. at least, this is the dogma of the neurodivergent/ASD “school” of animal management, which in my experience has merit. sounds get attention, communicate location and maybe basic ideas (warning! safe! i’m horny! i’m a big deal! look here!) when not in the visual field, but more rich communication is nonverbal visual cues, which can be very subtle or not noticeable to humans because we are so used to communicating via language as discrete sounds or symbols. some animals can be trained to recognize these sounds, but that doesn’t seem to be how they do things amongst their own kind.
i’m definitely talking out of my ass a lot here, but i did coursework in animal husbandry and spent years working with animals and studying resources on animal psychology, and if i had to describe it to a complete neophyte, like 99% of the communication between a human and an animal is silent and done with body language, orientation and small movements in like hand gestures. so your body is your tool and you have to start thinking about your body as an outside observer. it’s about presenting them with a picture and inviting their attention to part of it. this also means getting rid of any excessive movement (hanging fabric swaying in the wind, etc) and reducing contrasts in the “picture” (dark shadows, hard lights) so that the only significant movement is your intentional invitation.
this is the ASD/grandin system of learning to think in pictures like they do so you can recognize how to create pictures. it’s really subtle, but if you get good at it, people who don’t know it will think you’re an animal whisperer because they won’t see what you’re doing in the moment and just think you’re willing the animal around with your mind instead of engaging in this very subtle dance.
I hope my cats felinomorphise me as I anthropomorphise them
I hope my cats felinomorphise me as I anthropomorphise them
Makes me wonder what a human equivalent of a furry would look like to a ca- oh God never mind I just imagined it.
You’re thinking like a person; think cat instead.
Basically a human on all fours; the legs as long as the arms, the hand much smaller than it should be, the fingers ending in nubs; the body like an extremely emaciated and stretched out baby’s body, with ribs visible; a face with an elongated mouth and nose kind of like a Gelfling, with cleft lips; based on what the cat thinks a felinomorphised human ought to look like, it might have a long tail of just skin (and cat messageboards probably go into long debates about tail vs no tail). Also, whether the specimen is male or female, no breasts of any kind, only nipples. No fur, also no cat ears either (people don’t put human ears on furries for example), normal human ears instead. They would probably call them ‘skinnies’, or ‘fleshies’.
They do process faces as being kind of cat-like
https://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/99legacy/10-15-1999.html
Searched for a few terms but I dont see anything similar :shrug-outta-hecks:
Lots of citations
Ever since Diogenese plucked that chicken, I don’t know what I am
