Cats understand physics, according to a group of scientists in Japan

What a cat doing science looks like, probably

Cats appear to understand some laws of physics.

Scientists in Japan have been studying cats and have found that they seem to use their hearing to work out whether objects they can't see exist.

They also appear to understand the principle of cause and effect, which means they know that actions can lead to a reaction.

Cats aren't about to start getting higher scores than you in their A-Levels though.

The university of Kyoto published its results in the scientific journal Animal Cognition.

Way to go, cats!

Thirty domestic cats were filmed reacting to a researcher shaking a plastic container. Sometimes the plastic container had something in it, sometimes it didn't.

The results suggest that when the container rattled the cats expected it to have something inside.

Researchers say they know this because the cats stared at the containers for longer than the ones which were presumed to be empty.

They also stared for longer at non-rattling containers that were revealed to have an object inside and vice versa, as if they were surprised.

Saho Takagi lead the research and said: "Cats use a causal-logical understanding of noise or sounds to predict the appearance of invisible objects."

The scientists say they developed this ability to help them catch prey they couldn't see.

Animal Cognition says "further research is needed to find out exactly what cats see in their mind's eye when they pick up noises".

They also say it's not clear yet if they can work out how big, or how many objects there are.

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