What kittens and babies know
I’m watching video of an orphan kitten who was adopted by a mother cat with a litter about the same age. (Thanks Kitten Academy!) The orphan, named Chai, arrived at about two weeks old, having been bottle-fed by an animal shelter until then. Could Chai learn to nurse with the other kittens? An older kitten (four weeks?) given the same opportunity a year ago was not able to pick it up.
Yes: at only two weeks old, the instinct to nurse was still strong enough that Chai caught on immediately. It’s sweet to watch, because the kitten’s developing brain is working overtime to catch up. Chai is the most determined kitten in the litter now, almost obsessed with nursing. But it’s also a clear demonstration of how early kittens begin learning to assume that their world has a certain shape, because Chai missed that stage. She’s clueless and socially awkward.
Here’s the video. Chai is the dark kitten with two orange spots on her head, so she’s easy to pick out. At the start of the stream, the mother cat is outside of the nesting box, so the kittens are walking around on shaky legs.
Chai’s behavior is different from the start. She is shakier but she moves with more determination, as though the rescue experience taught her early that there’s somewhere to go. She was the first kitten to climb out of the box toward people, although she’s a few days younger. Chai also tends to crawl over other kittens as though they are objects, behavior the rest of the litter is moving away from. The main litter kittens tend to sit still unless they choose to go somewhere, and they look at each other more.
When the mother cat appears, Chai races to latch onto a nipple, kneading her paws almost desperately. It is still very, very big news to her that a furry warm cat-smelling thing dispenses milk. But when the other kittens start to crowd in, Chai is easily dislodged and disoriented. At the 4th minute mark, Chai is tumbled into facing the wrong way but eagerly seeks to keep nursing…on her adoptive mother’s leg. We can see at a glance that the natural-litter kittens have long since outgrown futile searches in the wrong places.
Chai fights ferociously to get back into the kitten pile, but although she pulls no punches, it doesn’t work. Her movements are still those of a newborn blind kitten, although her eyes are open. She goes in the wrong directions, at times ending up on the wrong side of the mother cat. When she can’t find a nursing spot, she cries piteously, although the foster-home staff quickly explain that she’s far from starving.
What Chai can’t do is what comes easily to the natural litter: take this miracle for granted. They know exactly what to do, and when and where and how. When they aren’t hungry, they feel comfortable dozing or just looking around. These kittens know very little, but they do know from their entire life experience that Mother will be back. They’re used to each other’s presence, too.
When you think about how much learning and socializing Chai has missed already, the surprise is that she still has the instinct to nurse from a real mother cat, when a bottle is all she’s known. At birth, that’s really all a kitten knows, but it knows that one thing with conviction. At two weeks, Chai still knows it, but knows nothing about it. We can see so clearly the differences between innate, inborn knowledge — instinct — and learned knowledge.
These differences are present in human babies, too, but we have a much harder time seeing them. Perhaps it’s because kittens grow up so much faster, or because their survival behaviors are simple and obvious: nurse, walk around, then bite, fight, and run. Humans are so much more complicated! We’re not even sure what babies are born knowing or need to know. They have the instinct to suckle, like every newborn mammal. But what else?
A human baby’s greatest survival need is defense against human adults. Just by their immobility, babies are protected from most dangers. When newborns die from an external cause, it’s almost always because an adult was careless or hostile. And that’s why a baby’s greatest instinctual behavior is to smile. Smiles create bonds of endearment, so that adults are motivated to be careful. Smiles can disarm aggression and hostility, too. It’s in a baby’s survival interests to prompt smiles all around.
This 2015 study used robot programming to show that babies innately know how to time their smiles to get back as many smiles as possible. Imagine a baby who’s about two months old before he starts to get positive feedback from his smiles. He might react like Chai, as his brain suddenly lights up a circuit that’s been in waiting: yes, this, THIS, is what’s supposed to happen when the face does this. Do it again.
And so our personalities grow, organized around poles of inborn, innate knowledge and zones of experimental exploration. That’s how we become who we are, and we can use this idea to better understand some of our problems.
If you’re interested in personality development, check out my book, Re-Modeling the Mind. If you’re just here to read about kittens, I’ll follow Chai for a few weeks and see how she learns! See: “Kittens and Puppies don’t learn the same things…”
