AnimalBehaviorist.us

22/05/2026

Does your cat sense when you are returning home?

In my research on the relationships between people and animals, I have long been interested in reports suggesting that pets may be aware of their owners’ intentions at a distance. In my book Dogs Who Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home, I explored many accounts of dogs appearing to anticipate their person’s return, even when there were no obvious sensory cues available to them, and even when the person returned at unpredictable times. These experiences may reflect a telepathic connection between people and animals.

Over the years, I have also heard from cat owners who describe very similar behaviour. I am currently coordinating a study to investigate and document these experiences in cats. I am specifically interested in cases where the behaviour cannot easily be explained by ordinary sensory signals, such as the sound of a familiar vehicle, footsteps, or visual cues. Ideally, the cat would begin waiting several minutes before the person actually arrives home.

I would be very interested to hear from cat owners who have noticed this and who may be willing to participate in a simple observational experiment.

In particular, I am looking for people who:
• Have a cat that appears to anticipate someone’s arrival home
• Observe this behaviour even when return times vary unpredictably
• Have ruled out obvious sensory explanations such as sounds, routines, or visual cues
• Would be open to taking part in a straightforward research study

If you are interested, please contact my research assistant Georgia Black by email at [email protected]

21/05/2026

"The study also raises broader questions about how animals use mechanical sounds to communicate. Human speech can produce enormous variation and subtlety through the vocal cords and the mouth. Researchers still do not know whether wing snaps and similar noises can carry equally nuanced meanings.

"The physics of the sound affects what kinds of messages the birds can send," Clark said. "Can they evolve different kinds of snaps? Or are they limited to one basic signal? That's something we'd love to understand."

Clark's laboratory studies the physics behind unusual animal sounds, including whether some wing-generated noises may create tiny shock waves similar to those formed when metal objects collide at high speed. Understanding how the sounds work could help explain why they evolved and what information they convey."

Little has been known, until now, about the sounds that birds make that aren't songs. A big-eyed nocturnal bird, the nightjar, makes such a sound and thanks ...

12/05/2026

"Environmental scientists, activists and even social media posts have highlighted the dangers of maritime traffic for sea mammals, Vermeulen said.

"There have been videos of people on cargo vessels that were going through high densities of humpback whales," she told AFP.

"Obviously, their social media post was all about, 'Wow, look how many nice whales we see,'" she said.

"My heart stopped—you know that they're striking a couple of whales."

In such cases, the creatures may be unaware of the dangers because they are preoccupied, for example, by feeding, she said.

"The fastest traffic, which poses the greatest strike risk, has increased by a factor of four," said Vermeulen.

"The animals haven't had time to adapt to shipping," said Chris Johnson, global lead of WWF's Whale and Dolphin Conservation initiative.

Blue whales off Los Angeles, for example, merely sink below the surface when they hear a ship, he told AFP.

"You assume that, if you hear a loud noise, you leave. But that's not the case with some species," he said.

In some cases, changes in whale behavior—possibly attributable to climate change—were putting them in harm's way.

Superpods of humpback whales started feeding seasonally off South Africa's increasingly busy west coast since 2011, said blue economy consultant Ken Findlay, who contributed to the report.

"That is a change that I think plays into an increased risk of ship strikes," he told AFP.

Collisions, which are largely underreported, are a "major cause of mortality for whales," according to a 2024 paper in the journal Science.

However, there are few protection measures in place for the species trying to recover since the 1986 International Whaling ban."

Conflicts in the Middle East are increasing dangers for whales off South Africa by shifting sea traffic into their habitats and heightening the risks of collision, researchers told AFP.

08/05/2026

Great study out now on challenges with approaches to handling in vetmed. AnimalBehaviorist.us supports and acknowledges the intense pressure on the veterinary community to perform, produce and to do the best job possible under all circumstances. Pressures that can be at odds with each other. And the vets feel it. So do the animals. Our "Making Time for Behavior" seminars focus on addressing the constraints and coming out on the side of welfare. Link for more info in comments.

IntroductionRoutine veterinary visits can be a major source of fear and stress in dogs, creating welfare concerns and safety risks for veterinary teams and o...

07/05/2026

Whether a dog owner rewards their dog with a treat or corrects it by pulling on the leash is not simply a matter of what they believe to be the most effective training method. According to the study, owners' choice of training methods is linked to their ethical stance on how animals should be treate...

05/05/2026

Is my Cat Stressed? How to spot signs of stress in your cat

Is my cat stressed? | How to spot signs of stress in your cat

04/05/2026

"Much of the time, where animal behavior does not meet human expectations, at issue is our own human predisposition to assume that what is meaningful to our species, is the standard from which all things need to be measured. What we term “aggression” and “unacceptable elimination” can be straightforward transmissions of information or orchestrated persuasive sallies or responses in cat or dog societies but not necessarily welcome or understood in our homes. Such misunderstandings can be dangerous for the cat voiding stress related pheromones, asking for space with hissing or the dog using growling as a warning. Nuanced animal communications or actions taken as distance increasing behaviors meant to avoid further confrontation are often misinterpreted as adversarial to our way of thinking. Human propensity to mistakenly view such behaviors as “challenges” can deprive animals of the possibility of avoiding conflict and escalate aggression in their efforts to defend themselves. Angry retorts and advances in reply to the dog growling or the cat hissing is exactly not what the cat or dog is asking for when those signals or messages to stop forward motion were communicated. Crossed wires on both ends. None of this ends well; behavior issues, namely “aggression” and “unacceptable elimination,” are top reasons for surrender at animal shelters.
Our human manners of posturing and tacit conventions for conflict avoidance are unique to our species and idiosyncratic to individual cultures, but avoiding fight, keeps all animals safe to see another day. Nature may have given a necessary collective language to all living beings when it comes to alerting to possible danger. Take guttural growls and yowls, larger and rigid postures, rapid forward movements; all unmistakable threats and calls for retreats to safety and not necessarily a call to arms. Each and every species has a suite of ritualized display behaviors that signal the need or desire to increase or reduce distance. The universal idea seems to be that a good bluff is the best offense and the best defense. No one really wants to go there, injured animals are compromised in their efforts to hunt, forage, mate, find shelter or carry on very well the business of living. For humans along with the rest of the animal kingdom, deference and space is what keeps the kingdom a peaceable one. Behavior read or unread, sets the rules of engagement for all species. Apotreptic or epitreptic, in response to, or to influence another. Equally significant for humans and just as much, for cats and dogs. Still, what is significant to us as humans means one thing to us and another to dogs and cats.
Context can be everything for behavior matters. That basic bodily function, elimination, can be quick to be seen in Western cultures as carrying ulterior motives in placement, beyond a biological necessity. Intended signaling or communication around such deposits are thought to purposefully offend. Such thinking, with a necessary basis in sanitary concerns, can associate transgression to bodily functions relating to urine and f***s, as if cats and dogs have something insulting or angry to say when relieving themselves in our homes.
What is being communicated in such leavings for cats and dogs, is not of the sort we might imagine, it is the more useful kind. Certain components of odor and pheromones (“chemosignals”) we miss, carry untold data; who I am, what I ate, my availability to mate, what belongs to me, how stressed or not I am. So many more messages we have yet to uncover, and at times we cannot even picture, lacking the essential Vomeronasal or Jacobson’s organ, that cats, dogs and other animals but not humans have, to break down pheromone streams. This possibly adds new and untold meaning to the other reasons that might exist for the cat not using the litter box, aside from it being covered, overloaded and in need of cleaning. While history and learning can never be discounted in anything an animal does, agendas are mostly human concerns. Non-human animals are perhaps more immediate in their responses to environment." excerpted from "Behavior Matters for Cats and Dogs" by Frania Shelley-Grielen

Behavior Matters for Cats and Dogs

01/05/2026

"It turns out that male mayflies rely on this bizarre up-and-down flight pattern to figure out who among the swarm is male, and who is female. By flying vertically, males rarely fly horizontally above the swarm – the signature of their female counterpart.

In further simulations, the scientists found that male mayflies would stop their pursuit of any target that dropped beneath the horizon.

“The problem is that the males have almost no filter,” Fabian says. “You can give them a beach ball – which, as far as I’m concerned, looks quite different from a female mayfly – and males will go right up to that much larger object and try to mate with it.”

Things get even trickier in low-light conditions, as females look almost identical to males even at close range. By staying below the females, males ensure their romantic energy is well spent. This is especially critical because mayflies do not have much time, only living from a few hours to a few days, during which they must pass on their genes."

The bizarre vertical flight pattern has long puzzled experts but new research reveals why it may play a crucial role in the insect’s survival

29/04/2026