Christelle Elvinia

February 7, 2018

B356 Motivation Project

“The Genesis of the Cat’s Responses to the Rat”

Zing-Yang Kuo
 Before the experiment began, Zing Yang Kuo established and reiterated the research on

cats killing rats. His particular research was to gain more evidence on the behavior that many

believed, at that time, was instinctive to cats. He was not interested if training/practice or social

influence was necessary for killing rats. His main objective was to manipulate the conditions of

how the kitten was brought up and how they would respond to the rat differently. Thus, there

were nine variations/conditions on how the kitten was raised. These nine conditions are as

follows: 1) cats raised in isolation 2) cats raised in rat-killing environment 3) cats raised in cages

with rats 4) vegetarian vs non-vegetarians (food habits) 5) starved for 12 hours or not (hunger

condition) 6) trained to eat the rat 7) participation and viewing cats eating rats 8) kind of rats

kitten prefer to kill (albino, wild, dancing) and 9) training the cat to fear the rat.

His results from each condition led to a very detailed summary. For the kittens raised in

isolation, only 9 out of 20 killed rats without learning it. He then states that this does not prove or

disprove rat-killing instinct, rather it merely showed that instinct and habit are not sufficient

concepts to explain the behavior. In the second condition, kittens who were raised in rat-killing

environment by watching their mothers, only 3 of the 18 did not kill rats. They almost always

killed the species they watched their mother kill. The 18 cats who were raised with rats, only 3

killed rats during the test but did not kill the species they were in cages. It is to be noted that cats

raised with rats cannot be trained to kill them. However, isolated cats can be trained, and he

found that 9 out 11 did. The ‘vegetarian’ diet for cats did reduce rat eating, however, not killing.

The hunger condition yielded little differences whether or not they were starved. His cat

killers had two questions he wanted to be answered. Does it matter the life conditions the cat had

to influence the age which they first killed a rat and whether the age is actually a factor that

determines which kind of rat the cat would kill. Apparently, the size of the rats determines when
they do kill the rats. The albino rats were the largest and the dancing mouse were the smallest

and it required a much older kitten to attempt to kill an albino rat. He then went to find out what

kind of rat does the kitten prefer to kill and noticed kittens raised with albino rats kill the other

species, but not the albinos. Thus, kittens raised with a particular kind of rat species did not kill

them. Another type of results he found was that there were 6 types of rat-killing behavior. He

stated that is was a very complex affair and killing is really only one kind of response. Finally, 3

out of the 10 cats raised to fear rats could be conditioned to fear rats. It is clearly seen then that

cats can be trained to fear from rats. Even though his results were very detailed and thorough, he

clearly demonstrated how to manipulate the settings of which the kittens were raised in to

explicitly show more evidence about the ‘rat-killing’ instinct.

In his discussion, he states that the cat is essentially a miniature tiger. It is fitted to

capture small animals, but it can also play with them, rather than kill or devour right away. Then,

he discusses that behavior is constantly being modified throughout our lives. The bodily makeup

of the organism should not be sufficient enough to say that this is how they are supposed to

behave. Kuo called the past experimental investigations of instincts to be superficial because the

fundamental aspects of behavior were missing.

This particular research contributes to the ideas/theories about motivation because it

proved that a behavior once thought to be an instinct, was actually through learning. This was a

big hit to the instinct idea because this showed proof to one of the criticisms it constantly

received, which was that the role of learning was undervalued. Instinct theories are now hardly

mentioned in courses and texts, but this does not mean it does not influence behavior. Some

tendencies are biologically programmed in us, but our experiences can play a role in our

responses as well. All in all, instinct theories have been proposed, in the past, to help explain our
motivation to do certain things. However, it should not be the only set of theories we look for

when we do try to explain the things we do.