Have you ever wondered if cats have a perception of time? Let’s see together what the experts say about it.
Whenever you have to leave yours cat alone at home, maybe for a long time when you go to work or even for a very long period like when you go on vacation, you wonder how the feline feels and whether he misses you or not.
To understand how it feels kitty when you are not there, you need to know how perceives time. Below we will tell you what the experts say.
How does the cat perceive time?
Is it known that cats are intelligent animals, but do they perceive time in the same way that a human being perceives it? A study has shown that animals have their own way ability to understand time.
Scientists have thus studied the memory of an mouse. Using virtual reality and a treadmill they showed that the mouse was running in a corridor towards a door that would open later 6 seconds and would offer food to the animal.
Experts finally cleared the virtual reality door and noticed that the mouse despite the absence of the latter, he ran towards it and waited 6 seconds to collect the reward.
This showed that the animals, therefore also the cat, have the understanding of time. It has also been shown that dogs perceive time intervals, in fact they have a level of excitement that differs according to the time of departure from their owner.
Can cats read the time?
It is assumed that i cats have their own way of knowing how to read the time. Obviously they will not be able to read the clock to see the time or a calendar to know what day it is.
THE felines, just like the mice in the study, they own a internal clock which guides them and which is timed by the circadian rhythm, that is, the rhythm characterized by a period of 24 hours.
If on your return home you notice the your cat which awaits you with great patience near the door or window, means that it has already activated its internal clock.
Since i felines do they have this internal clock, can they also know the time difference, for example make the difference between 2 minutes and 2 hours?
To answer this question, researchers observed the behavior of two groups of cats left alone, one group for 30 minutes and another for 4 hours.
Both groups showed the same attitude until the end of the session, and they also noticed no stress or anxiety in cats.
At the time of conciliation with its owners, i cats the 4-hour group showed, unlike the other group, more behavior loving.
This suggests that even though cats probably don’t miss you when you are away, they are capable of understand if you have been out for short or long periods.