Cats Know Names, But Won’t Answer to Them

Researchers in Japan are obsessed with cats, probably due to childhoods swamped in Hello Kitty. A few years back, they discovered that cats know their own names, even if they usually won’t respond when you call them. Now they’ve learned that cats know the names of their feline friends, too. Maybe they want to know if you’re giving treats to other kitties instead of them.

More:

“Cats Actually Know Each Other’s Names, Study Suggests,” Samantha Cole, Motherboard

“Cats know the names of other cats that are their friends, study says,” Matthew Rozsa, Salon

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Image (“Newscatster, in the Style of Modigliani”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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How Social Media Makes You Miserable

Social media makes you miserable through mimetic desire, says Luke Burgis. That means instilling you with other peoples’ desires instead of your own. A Big Think video.

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Recycling Arcade

Want to encourage recycling? Make it fun.

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The Bottomless Bin

Want to encourage people to stop littering? Make trash bins fun.

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Piano Stairs

Want to encourage people to exercise? Make it fun.

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What Men Think About

“By means of a golf tally counter, 283 college students kept track of their thoughts pertaining to food, sleep, or sex for one week. Males reported significantly more need-based cognitions overall, but there was no significant interaction between sex of participant and type of cognition recorded. Therefore, although these young men did think more about sex than did young women, they also thought more about food and sleep.”

— “Sex on the brain?: an examination of frequency of sexual cognitions as a function of gender, erotophilia, and social desirability,” Fisher, Moore, Pittenger,  Journal of Sex Research 2012, via NCBI

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Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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Confident Idiots

The Dunning–Kruger Effect is a cognitive bias in which people of low ability mistakenly assess their cognitive ability as greater than it is. They are ignorant of their own ignorance.

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Us versus Them

Immigration, Empathy and Psychology. Written by Teagan Wall; animated, and hosted by Vanessa Hill. Produced by BrainCraft for PBS Digital Studios.

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Thinking About Climate Change

The University of California’s Dr. M. Sanjayan explains why humans are so bad at thinking about climate change. A Vox video.

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Blame

Dr. Brené Brown explains blame in this 3-minute animation by Katy Davis, based on Dr. Brown’s presentation to the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA). See the full presentation here.

Animation by Katy Davis.

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