There are definitely a lot of differences between dogs and cats, and if there’s one thing that most will agree on, it’s that cats don’t really have striking facial expressions. Or do they? New research with over six thousand participants now says that felines actually do have facial expressions and can be ‘read’, so to speak, but it also says that we are just really, really bad at recognizing and interpreting them.

Our furry friends actually do their best to communicate via their facial expressions, but it turns out that no more than 13 percent of people can actually recognize them properly.

A new scientific study by Canadian researchers was published in the Animal Welfare journal, titled ‘Humans can identify cats’ affective states from subtle facial expressions‘.

The researchers gathered 6,329 people to show them videos of cats. That definitely sounds like fun, but it was all for science. The footage focuses on the faces of the felines, and the test subjects were then asked if they thought that the cats were feeling positive or negative. It was a simple binary question, there was no distinction between happy, sad, hungry or angry – just positive or negative.

The result? An average score of 12 out of 20.

Keeping in mind that there’s a 50% statistical chance that an answer is correct, a twelve isn’t exactly a good score.

The scientists classified people who scored above 15 as good, and they amounted to only 13 percent.

However, there are some interesting findings in the results. For example, younger people tend to do a much better job at recognizing cats’ facial expressions, and women fare a lot better as well compared to men.

“The fact that women generally scored better than men is consistent with previous research that has shown that women appear to be better at decoding non-verbal displays of emotion, both in humans and dogs,” Professor Georgia Mason said.

Of course, people who are around cats professionally also scored a lot better on the test.

However, being a cat owner actually doesn’t make a statistical difference, there’s no advantage compared to people who don’t have a feline friend in the home.

One thing the study suggests is that people can actually learn how to analyze the facial expressions of our furry four-footers. In other words, if there’s a bigger understanding of the feline facial expressions, people could potentially be trained to understand their cats better.

“The ability to read animals’ facial expressions is critical to welfare assessment. Our finding that some people are outstanding at reading these subtle clues suggests it’s a skill more people can be trained to do,” Professor Lee Niel told.

“This is important to be able to do because it could help strengthen the bond between owners and cats, and so improve cat care and welfare,” he added.

If you’ve gotten curious yourself about this test, the researchers have actually made a tool available online. Feel free to take this survey presented bu the University of Guelph to see just how good your feline facial expression skills are.

Please SHARE this with your friends and family.

Source: IFLScience, Daily Mail, Qualtrics Cat Faces Study