Interesting Links for 04-02-2023

[andrewducker]

1. Turns out cats have object permanence

(tags:psychology cats video )

2. "A New Drug Switched Off My Appetite. What's Left?"

(tags:medication hunger diet weight behaviour )

3. Amazing manufacturing, chopping, and crushing devices. Hypnotic and impressive

(tags:manufacturing automation )

4. Fastest and Most Skillful Workers Ever

(tags:video work manufacturing cooking )

5. Polar! Bear! Cub! With! Mum!

(tags:bears arctic video cute )

Comments

[ljgeoff]

re: cats It seems to me that if a predator animal is stalking something sneaky like a small rodent, that the predator would have to have object permanence or the predator would just wander away when the rodent hid?

[autopope]

Yup.

I have a cat. I have an iMac with decent sound and a retina display (over 300 ppi screen, wide colour gamut). Sometimes I amuse her by screening videos off YouTube designed to entertain cats -- woodland scenes with a table covered in enough bird seed to attract prey.

She sometimes jumps on my desk and looks behind the iMac to see where the birds (that just flew off-screen) are hiding.

And sometimes when Feorag is watching football on the TV in the living room she'll go behind the TV to see where the ball went.

(The lack of birds or ball clearly irritates her.)

[andrewducker]

Oh yes, it's impressive that screens work well for confusing cats.

[simont]

The last time I lived with a cat was a couple of decades ago, when monitors were still deep CRTs. The top of a 21" CRT is a perfect place for a cat to sleep – just the right size and self-heated – so naturally, he curled up there and had a doze. When he woke up, I was using the computer, i.e. staring with avid interest at something just below him. Naturally he leaned over the front of the monitor to have a look at what as so fascinating.

And it was fascinating, of course, because there was this tiny white arrow thing zipping unpredictably back and forth on the screen! He promptly tried to catch the mouse pointer, lost his balance, and fell inelegantly off the top of the monitor on to the keyboard with a resounding crash :-)

[channelpenguin]

Exactly.

Fun stuff... https://www.rd.com/list/how-smart-is-your-cat

[channelpenguin]

My Felix has object permanence - yup. It's obvious when we play.
He knows the cupboard with the toys and sits in front of it when he wants to play.
(He also seems to know that once they go back in there, they need some time before they "resurrect")

I haven't formally tried the pointing, but I'm fairly sure he'll get it.

(I've taught him some tricks and words too, he seems pretty bright and cooperative.)

[simont]

You're saying that your cat is deliberately camping the toys' respawn point?

[channelpenguin]

It definitely feels like that's the concept in his head

He also brings the toy to the crumpled paper balls with the same idea, I think. Because a few times, when he had caught the toy, and I wanted to make it a "kill" for him, I tossed a crumpled paper ball for him to rip up. Then moved the toy.

He's sort of figured out that I do *something* with the toy handle to make it move, but he hasn't quite figured out how to pull it and chase at the same time - so he just chews the handle. I this weekend found out he has not got the connection - the toy part was dangling by its string down a gap, but pulling on the wand part would have got it out. He kept fishing with his paw and didn't try that.. But maybe he was just sticking to the "rules" of the game...

In fact, he very young started deliberately making his wee furry balls "hide" so he could find them. And toys are only really fun for him if they hide (unless he's in a jumping mood - very good jumps often lead to a wee bout of celebratory penis-licking, lol). This weekend he's been dragging the whole wand toy to a rug or blanket or other thing... It took me a couple of times to work out that he wanted me to make it hide under them (my finesse with the wand toy isn't up to that just using the handle!)

Last week he suddenly decided to find all the wee balls in the living room. There were about 9. Haven't seen most for months. Brought them all out then stared at me meaningfully. No,I wasn't too throw them... I guessed I should hide them again. Don't know if that was right!

[agoodwinsmith]

Lorne and I used to watch "How It's Made" and "Food Factory", and two things always made us comment: (1) the odd little jobs that still needed a human to do, right in the middle of all the whirling and swooshing; and (2) activities that were still considered a "good job" if a human could get it, like stuffing sardine portions in tins.

[agoodwinsmith]

And the cat thing. Depends on the cat. My current Suzi is too busy to be paying attention to anything anyone else is doing. She is never going to understand pointing because she sooooo doesn't care. My Chucko of fond memory, however, could look me in the eye while we both looked in the mirror, and I could point and he would look in the correct direction.

[andrewducker]

That's impressive!

[anna_wing]

That incredibly obsessive and elaborate weightloss programme was making a mountain out of a molehill.

People regain weight if they try to resume the same habits that got them fat in the first place. Leaving aside various forms of exercise, if I tried to eat the amount that I ate when I had 18 kg more mass, I'd regain it pretty fast, together with all the health problems that came with it. But I don't need to (because of not having that extra amount of mass to maintain), so I don't.

My cats definitely know where things are and where they aren't. They lost interest in the TV pretty fast. One won't even play with toys, because he knows they're not real prey (house lizards are another matter).

[andrewducker]

The point of the article is that the ridiculous over the top system was him trying to grapple with constant feelings of starvation, and once that went away actually losing weight was actually pretty trivial and didn't need a system at all.

[bugshaw]

Do you reckon it's worth getting a subscription to read the article? I caught a few glimpses before the popups and it (and your comment) may be like what I've got. But if I have to pay to read it and am disappointed to find it's Yet Another Article That's Impossible Or Not Applicable I will be very sad and want to eat the pie my body is screaming at me will sort me out (it won't).

[andrewducker]

https://archive.ph/Z218W

That should do it for you!

[bugshaw]

Thank you! Yes, interesting and relevant to me. No, I'm dysregulated enough already so I'm not inclined to add it to my system. Something nice and calming.

[simont]

My favourite part of #3 was the mesh fence maker starting at about 2:37. The part where half of each circular wire holder can interchange with the next one and they can still rotate in either configuration just has a Rubik's Cube level of cleverness.

(That is, the kind of cleverness required to build a Rubik's Cube, totally different from that required to solve one.)

[andrewducker]

Yeah, I love how simple they make that kind of thing look, compared to how long it must have taken to work out.

[hairyears]

It seems obvious that any creature (or colony organism) that maintains a territory and remembers how to navigate to the resources it 'owns' has object permanence.