ÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´

Cats’ eyes

I was told cats cannot watch television because their motion perception is so fast that they see the bright dot scanning the screen and no picture. However, friends insist that their cats get quite excited when a cat appears on television. What is the truth?

• Every cat lover who reads New ÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ will probably write in to you with their favourite stories but the simple answer is that cats can watch TV. A cat’s motion perception is not so fast that it can track the beam that scans across a TV display or computer monitor, or fast enough to see a series of separate still images if you take your cat to the movies. The screen is being refreshed at more than 50 times per second, which is too rapid for humans or cats.

However, that does not mean a cat will interpret a TV picture in exactly the way we will. Images on flat screens lack many cues for depth perception, notably the relative movement of objects at different distances when we move our heads, and the cat may find the whole experience puzzling. You can expect cats to respond most strongly to the same cues that signal a prey in the wild: small objects, preferably with eyes and ears, moving in a jerky fashion or running away.

James Wilson

Oxford, UK

Yes, cat lovers did respond in huge numbers. Below we print a small selection – with a starring role for Charles Tye’s cat – Ed

• Both our cats ignore the TV unless we are watching a wildlife programme, at which point they get quite excited and watch intently. They seem to be attracted to any animal-like movement regardless of species. However, their favourite programme by far is The Secret Life of the Mouse, which they can watch from beginning to end without getting bored (see Photo).

Charles Tye

Copenhagen, Denmark

• My cat, Quantum, has all the right reactions to pictures on TV: an interest in birds and small mammals (as long as they are not enlarged too much) and submissive behaviour in the presence of a lion or cheetah. Less predictable is a wide-eyed fascination with polar bears and the children’s puppet the Bear in the Big Blue House. On several occasions she has lifted out stacks of video cassettes from under the TV in order to get behind the screen, which is presumably where she thinks all the animals are.

Steve Graham

Craigavon, Armagh, UK

• We have a cat that, at the age of three months, enjoyed the snooker world championships on TV. She would wait until the cue ball was hit, follow its path with her head, and acknowledge that a ball had gone into a pocket by peering around to the back of the TV set to see where it had gone.

Michael King

Eastleigh, Hampshire, UK

• I have lived all my life in the company of various cats, and I would say that all of them have displayed a clear ability to watch TV and relate to what they were seeing.

Several of the cats could follow a ball during a football match, attempting to bat at the ball with their paws. They would definitely respond to other cats on the screen. But the most convincing evidence came only a few weeks ago, when my current cat, Smutt, leapt from her slumbers and tried to catch a flock of birds filmed during migration. She remained on hind legs, batting at the screen until the subject matter changed.

Ruth Hollands

Edinburgh, UK

Space talk

When Yuri Gagarin orbited the Earth and when Apollo 11 landed on the moon, the TV broadcasts had very poor quality pictures and sound. Last week, I saw a broadcast from the International Space Station. Video from space is now very clear and sharp, yet the audio is as bad as in the 1960s. Why has one improved but not the other?

• The problems of deciphering the speech from astronauts have very little to do with the broadcast qualities of the signals arriving from space. As the questioner says, these have improved immeasurably since Yuri Gagarin orbited Earth in 1961 and Neil Armstrong landed on the moon in 1969.

The problem actually arises from the microphones the astronauts use to speak to Mission Control. High-quality microphones are heavy, and weight is always at a premium on space flights. Sound quality for TV viewers is one of NASA’s lower priorities. So light, cheap wireless microphones are installed in astronauts’ equipment. Their wireless speech messages travel as an FM signal to the space station or shuttle communicator and then by radio and satellite to the Earth, which obviously degrades the signal further. But as long as Mission Control understands the information, that is considered good enough.

Astronauts do train to use the microphones in a way that makes their speech intelligible, but in the heat of the moment their voices can become garbled.

Stephanie Richards

Bournemouth, Dorset, UK

This week’s question

Cutting bills

How do puffins hold a dozen or so floppy sand eels or minnows in their beaks? I see so many photographs of puffins with their apparently sharp, bolt-cutter beaks holding a neat line of fish. If I try picking up fish one at a time, as I presume puffins do, with scissors or even my fingers, I find it impossible. How do they get them all in a neat line and then avoid cutting them in two?

L. E. Kotz

Waterloo,

New South Wales, Australia