Cats understand the laws of physics, researchers claim

Alternative Explanations

Did they account for cats have better hearing than humans? Also, cats are predators with very good vision and smell. Some prey animals may not be making much noise but moving.

I think Ig-Noble prize is appropriate for this "research".

Some human beings, who as a species routinely fail to land on their feet, suggest that an animal who nearly always lands on its feet is possibly able to comprehend a human concept called gravity. A human entity paid for this conclusion to be reached, and other people duly took that assignment and worked on proving it by using magnets and rattling cups and video cameras.

Meanwhile I'm unemployable because I'm not qualified and/or certified at anything.

By "rudimentary understanding of gravity"...

... I gather they mean, "things fall down".

A more reasonable way of putting it would be that cats understand the concept of "containers". But I don't think that's news to anyone who's ever shared a home with a cat.

This is all well and good

But the really important question I have is this: what the heck is a "Japanese cat cafe"?

Straight out of Monty Python

"Tell me sir, have you confused your cat recently?"

Schrodinger was right !

This "experiment" is conducted daily in millions of homes and is the direct proof that cats are quantic beings who can tunnel through walls and doors when in the mood.

Experimental set up: One cat, One human, One (not empty) box of dry cat food, One empty box

Process1: Human shakes box of cat food while cat is securely locked outside the house

Result1: Cat tunnels, often destructively through all matter separating it from the food box.

Process2: Human shakes empty box in front of cat.

Result2: Cat barely tunrns head and gives human "stare of death" which means "Don't waste my time slave, Get your fat ass off the couch and go buy another box of kitteh food*" (*approximate translation)

Conclusion: Japanese scientists never had cats !

"This study may be viewed as evidence for cats having a rudimentary understanding of gravity."

No, it may not.

Sometimes, you really wish that researchers could be punished by having to pay back all their grant money.

This is such a "No shit, Sherlock" result. I suggest that most mammals have sufficient reasoning power to work out that one thing leads to another, and that a box which makes a noise might be of interest. Any animal will be curious about a silly human waving something around - after all, instinct tells them it may contain food!

You could repeat the same experiment with new-born babies, and would probably see similar results, but I doubt anyone would try to extrapolate from that that the infants have a deep understanding of physics.

Cats know about the laws of gravity...

...they don't think that the laws apply to them: https://pics.onsizzle.com/Facebook-409338.png

You don't want to it like that, you want to do it like this.

Get one see-saw and lead access tunnels from the points the see-saw would touch the ground, if unbalanced, to a central space where a cat can see both ends no matter how the see-saw is balanced.

The point at which the cat can enter the routes has a door which closes once the see-saw starts to move.

The cat has to anticipate which side of the see-saw is going to drop to ground level and thus be accessible via the tunnel.

After acclimatising the cat to the scenario place a mouse on one side and a baby rabbit on the other.

If the cat understands gravity, then the baby rabbit will get Elmer Fudded.

This assumes cats have no preference to mice over baby rabbits, which from real world observations, seems to be the case.

can I have my £50,000 grant paid in beer tokens for simplicities sake.

The other day I was observing small children playing pinball for the first time.

They seemed to have a poorer grasp of physics than these cats.