

Our new understanding of Human Cat communication - uxhacker
http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2015/04/your-cat-is-trying-to-talk-to-you.html?mid=facebook_nymag

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tzs
> Dogs we get, mostly because they are so easy to get. They have expressive
> faces and body language that we can read pretty accurately, according to
> researchers who study animal behavior.

I'd guess that a big factor in this is that we've had dogs a lot longer. Cats
were domesticated around 4000 years ago. Dogs 11000-16000 years ago, or
19000-32000 years ago, or possibly up to 135000 years ago--different methods
of analysis give different ranges. Whatever the number for dogs, it is at
least 3 times as long ago as for cats.

So, dogs have been adapting to living closely with humans for a lot longer, so
it makes sense we'd learn to understand them better than other animals.
They've been adapting to make it easier.

Also, the way we use dogs is different than the way we use cats. Working dogs
are like employees, with us as their supervisors. They'd hunt with/for us,
fight with/for us, guard things with/for us, herd animals with/for us, and so
on. We used them in roles that required coordination between the dogs and the
humans.

Working cats are like independent consultants. They come in and rid our grain
storage of pests, for example, without us working closely with them. There
simply wasn't much need for cat/human communication for most of the history of
working cats.

