Kittens and puppies don’t learn the same things…
During their first week of life, kittens start lining up to nurse in the same order, but puppies never learn that. It’s obviously more efficient to have it all worked out and not keep fighting at every meal, so why don’t puppies learn it too?
I’m far from being an animal expert, so I’m just thinking out loud as I learn about it, myself. But I spent several years writing a book about human personality that really focused on the key differences between innate, instinctual learning and experimental, pragmatic learning. It’s much harder to see these things in human babies, so it helps to look first at animals. So what are kittens and puppies knowing and learning?
Cats generally relate to each other by having territories: actual places that they dominate. Big cats in the wild stake out land that’s their beat, and they fight other big cats to stay out of it. Male cheetahs defend notably smaller territories than female cheetahs, who range farther. Prides of lions work together to defend territory, while other big cats don’t.
House cats have favorite places, and usually there are some spots that only one or another cat will hang out in. When a cat dies, in a household with many cats, they will all slightly shift their spaces, although to human eyes there’s no obvious reason for it. It’s just how cats get along, and it’s a very important social skill for them.
So when kittens start lining up in a set order, they are applying their innate, underlying brain structure about what it means to be a cat, at the same time that they are learning this important lesson: how to share space with many other cats as peacefully as possible. There’s still some pushing and shoving, but nothing like the newborn litter’s constant wandering and scratching. A few kittens contest with each other while the others are at rest, in place.
In the video below, you can see how Chai, the orphan kitten who has been part of this litter for about five days, isn’t comfortable sitting still around the other kittens. Mr. A. and DJ, staff at Kitten Academy, are giving the kittens supplemental feedings in this video clip. Each kitten is set down in a blanket basket after feeding, and by the end of the sequence, the natural litter kittens are just sitting still. But Chai, the orphan, doesn’t seem aware of the other kittens in the way they’re aware of each other:
Chai is not older than the others; if anything, she’s a few days younger and is shakier on her feet. But she doesn’t know her place among the other cats yet. She missed that early first stage of learning how to be a litter. In this clip a minute earlier, you can see her climbing out twice:
The only way to get a picture of all of the litter together, with Chai, is to feed her and put her in last. Everyone else is still just hanging out, cozy and contented:
Chai will learn eventually, perhaps, but I think other orphan kittens have shown similar traits. (In past videos, see Kazoo and Charlie!)
Dogs don’t stake out territory; that’s one reason it’s so much easier to travel or move with pet dogs. They’re attached to you more than to the place, while cats are more attached to the place. And as young puppies, they don’t learn to choose a particular nipple and place order, as kittens do. The chaos of puppies is less efficient, since they never stop contesting with each other. Did tame dogs lose a wild-animal behavior when they no longer had to fight to survive? No, apparently wild dogs behave the same as tame dogs, as nursing litters of puppies. Dogs learn to find their social place in a group, not their geographical place. Learning to line up in nursing would not teach them this skill as well as jostling and pushing does.
These behaviors are not inborn as such, or else Chai would know what to do. Nor can they be only learned, or else puppies might learn to line up. Instead, what we learn easily is what’s already halfway there in a template form. The template isn’t the full behavior, but it’s the tendency to acquire the behavior. It isn’t the habit, but it’s the ability to form the habit with only minimal reward.
People, too, have templates. Human babies are born with the same instinct to suckle that other mammal babies have, but their templates of behavior are about communicating with other humans. Even very young babies seem to have instincts about faces: how to avoid the direct gaze of an angry adult, and how to smile at the right moment to make adults happy.
If you’re interested in human personality, check out my book Re-Modeling the Mind. If you just like kittens, I’ll keep watching to see if Chai begins to learn how to be in a litter.
