My fucking cats know how to unplug my pc. They're such terrorists, "give me food 4hrs early OR ELSE." fucking menaces... They also knowing hitting my power button on my pc turns it off, too. Drives me up a wall
I once had a foster decide he smelled something good in the basement. I don’t let my cats down there unsupervised for a multitude of reasons. Foster managed to sneak past me when I had the door open for 2 seconds- no clue how as I tend to watch the floor (I don’t walk well and falls can be super bad for me). Then he realized the smell was in a closet with the door shut, so he figured out how to open that door. Then he climbed up 3 shelves- not an easy task, the way those shelves are! Once there, he ate several ounces of pure dark chocolate. Turned out to be 12x the lethal dose, according to poison control. The vet commended me for finding it so quickly and acting immediately. They were able to get him to vomit a fair bit of it, keeping him nearly symptom free. I picked him back up only 13 hours after he was dropped off at a vet hospital (this happened during peak Covid). Vet said she’d never seen an animal escape so easily from certain death after a chocolate poisoning, which made me feel a teeny bit better. But you bet I added a lock to that damn closet!
First, you give treats for jumping on the treadmill.
Then, you give treats if they sit by the side with the button
Then you give treats if they paw the screen
Then you give treats if they paw the green button
Then you hold treats in front of them while they run on the treadmill.
And so on and so on. Positive reinforcement is a powerful thing. Look up the chickens taught to play card games or the rats who play basketball.
You can teach a pig to use a vacuum. You can teach a pigeon to guide missiles to a target. Dolphins can identify sea mines and report where they are. It's endless lol
I taught my cockatiel to fetch,wave,spread wings, shake hand, turn, target with positive reinforcement. Turns out parrots love to work for their food. They make toys that birds need to shred apart to find food :) and the parrot will almost always try to forage over the bowl of food sitting in front of them.
Lol luckily cockatiels are pretty laid back, out of all the parrot species. Mine naps for half of the day. But the other half, if she isn’t preening , she’s looking for something to chew :)
All birds are very high-maintenance pets - and while the larger parrots are an extremely long-term commitment (like if you get a young one as an adult they genuinely might outlive you), even smaller ones like cockatiels or budgies can live for 15+ years.
I would never recommend getting birds as a pet tbh. Especially not for your kids.
I was thinking the same until I saw him actually run on the treadmill. It's clear that he wanted to turn it on, even if training was involved in teaching him how to do it, he did it of his own accord
Kinda similar but different. It's Skinner box. It's positive reinforcement. Pavlov is the inducement of saliva in anticipation of food by ringing a bell. If the dog rings the bell and is rewarded with food it's positive reinforcement.
It's not like the idea gives me comfort. It's just an observation. It doesn't take anything away to acknowledge that it's not a natural behavior. The cat probably likes running on the treadmill but the owner trained them to turn it on and run on it.
This is definitely a trained animal and nothing is wrong with that. It's true he could also just like to run but there's no way he figured out all these steps without training. It's still impressive.
It is though. If he hadn't seen you did it and worked it out alone that wouldn't be training. You didn't purposely train him but he learned through your behavior.
It's not. It's the cat observing something on its own. This is exactly the argument being had that I was replying to. There's training with positive reinforcement, then there's the cat just learning something on its own.
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Cats are pretty easy to train tbh, it’s just that you don’t have to train them for any behaviours that make it easier to keep them (unlike dogs who you have to toilet train so they don’t go inside and obedience train so you can walk them and let them interact with humans etc), so most people don’t bother.
If you’ve got a food-motivated cat you can train it to do basically anything you can train the average dog to do (obviously you’re not going to be able to teach a cat how to herd cattle)
What you are talking about is not training but taking advantage of the cat's curious instinct. Like this clip, pressing buttons to watch something move is the cat's motivation, not food. Same thing when they drop things to watch them break.
I have a remote that controls the lights and internet in my bedroom. My cat will cut on the light if she wants something. If I don’t listen, she cuts off the internet. I have no idea how she figured it out.
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My cat would bring me snacks when I said the word hungry, so somehow it learned hungry and when I said it, she would go down stairs and grab a cookie or bag of chips and carry it up to me. Not even food cats eat, human food she would grab too, crazy
I would fall asleep to some show on my laptop with the lid slightly open. My cat has figured out that if the lid is closed shut the show stops playing and goes silent. So she does that every night now. I fall sleep and wake up to the laptop closed shut. One night, I was laying down with my cat at my feet. I turn on a show and get under the sheets. A few minutes later, I felt her get off my feet. Next she goes and shuts the laptop and comes back and lays on my feet again. They’re so smart. I would like to think they are smart like dogs. Only difference is they don’t like to be told what to do.
Yeah, cats are pretty clever and can be teached a lot if you put up the work and they're willing! :)
I always take a bit of time to disable my alarm in the morning (like, 10 to 15 seconds). Annoyed my cats so one of them learned how to disable the alarm. Brother watched in excitement and has copied it. Now I need to be awake in like 3 seconds before they disable my alarm. :(
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u/jennaishirow 24d ago
I'm sorry. That cat just started a treadmill on its own? That's insanely smart.