Until then, social cognition researchers had paid little attention to dogs, thinking their minds had been "corrupted" by thousands of years of domestication. In 1998, Hare and Ádám Miklósi, a cognitive ethologist at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, independently published studies showing dogs could understand human pointing. "I turned to my adviser," says Hare, now an evolutionary anthropologist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, "and said, ‘I think my dog can do that.'" In the spring of 1996, Brian Hare, then an undergrad at Emory University in Atlanta, was studying how toddlers pass the pointing test. Cats left behindĬarl's canine predecessor was a black Labrador retriever named Oreo. That is, if the cats themselves deign to participate. It also may eventually offer insight into how domestication transformed wild animals into our best friends, and even hint at how the human mind itself changed over the course of evolution. The work could transform the widespread image of cats as aloof or untamed. After years when scientists largely ignored social intelligence in cats, labs studying feline social cognition have popped up around the globe, and a small but growing number of studies is showing that cats match dogs in many tests of social smarts. "Good boy!" Vitale coos.Ĭarl isn't alone. He trots right over to the bowl Vitale is pointing at, passing the test as easily as his canine rivals. Yet, as cats are apt to do, Carl defies the best-laid plans of Homo sapiens. So researchers thought cats couldn't possibly share our brain waves the way dogs do. But unlike our canine pals, cats descend from antisocial ancestors, and humans have spent far less time aggressively molding them into companions. Like dogs, cats have lived with us in close quarters for thousands of years. The finding shook the scientific community and led to an explosion of studies into the canine mind.Ĭats like Carl were supposed to be a contrast. But about 20 years ago, researchers discovered something surprising: Dogs pass the test with flying colors. Most other animals, including our closest living relative, chimpanzees, fail the experiment. They know that when we point at something, we're telling them to look at it-an insight into the intentions of others that will become essential as children learn to interact with people around them. "Carl!" Vitale calls, and then points to one of the bowls. An undergraduate research assistant kneels a couple of meters away, holding Carl firmly. In a stark white laboratory room, Vitale sits against the back wall, flanked by two overturned cardboard bowls. Now, Vitale hopes Carl will pull off another coup, by performing a feat of social smarts researchers once thought was impossible. Abandoned on the side of the road in a Rubbermaid container, the scrawny black kitten-with white paws, white chest, and a white, skunklike stripe down his nose-was rescued by Kristyn Vitale, a postdoc at Oregon State University here who just happens to study the feline mind. CORVALLIS, OREGON-Carl the cat was born to beat the odds.