Researchers Read 1,100 Comments Under Videos of Cats Who Were Not Playing

A team at the University of Adelaide picked eleven videos from YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook. All were captioned as play. All showed a cat doing the opposite: ears flat, tail thrashing, hissing, trying to leave. In seven of the eleven, the human had been visibly injured. Then the researchers read the first hundred comments under each one.

Between 75 and 93 percent of the comments under each video were positive. Not a single video had a majority of people saying the cat looked unhappy. "I was surprised at how many comments were positive," said Julia Henning, who led the study. "I had expected to find a more balanced spread."

Cookie · Editor-in-chief

So thousands of people watched a cat say no, in cat, and typed adorable.

Nora · Adoption desk

Most of them owned cats.

Cookie · Editor-in-chief

Worse. Much worse.

We are not showing you the videos, on purpose. The whole point of the finding is that watching one more does not teach you anything; knowing the vocabulary does. A cat that wants to keep playing has its ears forward, its pupils busy, and it comes back for more when you stop. A cat that has finished flattens its ears sideways or back, thrashes rather than flicks its tail, goes still and low, or simply tries to leave. Hissing and growling are not part of play. They are the sentence after the sentence you missed.

The researchers' point is not that anyone is being cruel. It is that the early signals are quiet, the late ones arrive as teeth, and a camera rewards the loud part. So when you play, stop before you think you need to and see whether your cat asks for more. If it does, you were both playing.