Your cat may not seem to be listening to you, but it¡¯s now believed that they recognize the names of their feline friends, and maybe your name as well, according to a recent study by Japanese researchers.

Dogs have been known to follow human speech to some degree, but it had not been scientifically clear whether cats have a grasp of human languages.

In the first study of its kind, scientists from Kyoto University, Azabu University in Kanagawa Prefecture and other institutions have proposed that cats learn to associate names with certain objects. was published in Scientific Reports in April.

¡°This research has shown that cats naturally learn the names of other individuals they live with through communication with humans,¡± said Saho Takagi, who led the study. ¡°This is only possible if cats pay attention to human conversations, even when people are not speaking to them.

¡°Cats may not appear to listen in on human conversations, but they actually are.¡±

In the study, researchers used the same observation method used with other animal species and babies, in which language comprehension is recognized when the subject stares at a certain object longer if it is called by the wrong name. It is believed that by staring at something longer, the subject is displaying confusion or indicating that something is not in line with their expectations and is trying to better understand the situation.

Researchers sat a group of pet cats in front of a monitor while saying the names of the fellow felines they live with. At the same time, images of the cats in question were shown on the monitor. Then the researchers used different cats while saying the names and compared their furry subjects¡¯ reactions.

When the name did not match the picture of the cat, the test subjects would, on average, gaze at the image for a second longer, suggesting that cats understood the names of other cats they live with, the researchers said.

¡°I¡¯m glad that I was able to reveal another aspect of how clever cats are,¡± said Takagi.

Takagi and her team also ran the same test using the pet owners to see if the cats recognized their names. The results showed no clear difference, but cats living with larger families for longer periods of time stared at the images for longer when the names didn¡¯t match, the researchers said.

The latest experiment was conducted with 19 cats from households with three or more cats, as well as 29 others from cat cafes. Cats in cat cafes displayed no difference in their responses.