Many families are interested in sharing their lives with both dogs and cats. Scientists at the The Tel Aviv University has studied ways to increase the chance that both pets will live together in harmony. Their results were reported in the Journal of Applied Animal Behavior.
Science Daily offers this new report on their interesting findings. Dogs and Cats Can Live in Harmony, If Introduced in the Right Way.
One of the things that was most interesting is that dogs and cat may have conflicting body language. For example, cats arch their back when they are happy and purring. Dogs arch up when they are tense.
In situations where dogs and cats coexist in harmony – they feel that each species was learning to “read” their language of the other animal. We see this all the time on the farm. The English Shepherds read the body language of cows and horses so it is not a stretch that dogs and cats can learn to read the body language of each other.
A hopeful thought posed by the research: If dogs and cats can learn to understand and get along with each other, maybe people have a chance.