Using a team-up of animals (or even young human twins) to play a single role is definitely a recurring theme across film. “Lassie” and “Flipper” famously come to mind.
Also, I don’t doubt that cats were hard to train in early film due to the novelty of the situation, but I don’t think it’s nearly as much of a factor as formerly. For example, not only have training methods continually been improved, but anticipating the need ahead of time, cats can be trained from kittenhood to help portray a variety of roles. That’s an enormous help, right there. Something-something Green-Screen I guess, as well…
I think the big issue is that cats can’t be motivated. They don’t care about pleasing people so it’s it’s mostly leveraging approach behaviour for food motivation, or one of the defensive behaviours to novelty. Clicker training helps a bit on the appetitive side.
I think the big issue is that cats can’t be motivated.
I can’t really agree that it’s all that relevant to today’s film. It would be one thing if you needed cats to go on sustained, real-life missions. Dogs can do that much better, and arguably other animals such as various birds and rats.
Film is different in that you only need to capture limited shots and scenes, and can stitch them in to the illusion of a thematic, practical whole. Look at films like: The Incredible Journey, Three Lives of Thomasina, Murder She Purred, Milo & Otis, etc. Not to mention Babe, Mr. Ed, Lancelot Link, and other animal-themed films where a bunch of non-cat, non-dog actors ‘act,’ via studio or practical effects.
Cats being harder to train and less motivated simply isn’t a significant limiting issue in modern film, based on the evidence I know.
I think that’s all correct. It’s the “training methods are better” and “trained from kittenhood” parts that I was reacting to. Cats are still very much their own thing and aren’t really trainable in the way that other animals are. The other methods you describe are certainly a way around that.
Domestic dogs have been human companions for tens of thousands of years IIRC, and have been bred for various jobs along the way (much of that in the last ~150yrs, but still). They’re attuned to our moods and facial expressions like no other animal on earth. Indeed, they are such non-typical animals that we might even consider them in the same class as ourselves, i.e. naked apes who like to pretend that we’re not also monkeys… or just animals, period.
Domestic cats are an interesting case, though. They’ve been living with man for as much as 10Kyrs or longer, and are in a unique ‘sweet spot’ of having a host of domestic, trainable, man-loving characteristics, while also showing hugely independent and self-sustaining sides (unlike dogs for example, who tend to not do well living wild). These are pretty simple facts, conceptually, but it seems like many (most?) of us moderns are still somewhat unaware of.
Just as training methods and technique for almost anything you can think of keeps evolving over the years, there’s no doubt in my mind that the same isn’t true for cat-training. Part of that would no doubt involve better understanding of their minds and drives, and trying to work adjacent with those things, rather than expecting a more ‘dog-like’ experience.
Ditto handling cats, or almost any animal, from infancy. You’re naturally going to get a creature far calmer, more docile, and more cooperative around the ‘parent’ individual, and to some extent humans in general. That’s always going to help with training. Pretty sure there are loads of video examples of such on YT, but I could be wrong…
There are classic papers on these topics. I highly recommend the Brelands for the laughs. https://psych.hanover.edu/classes/Learning/papers/Breland and Breland 1961.pdf
Basically not all animals are trainable, and not all are trainable in the same ways. And the training may only be phase before the behavior becomes unmanageable. The linked paper has multiple examples of stimulus substitution where the animal appears to learn the task for awhile, but then everts to untrained behavior because the conditional stimulus is substituted for the unconditional stimulus.
You know, I wanted to be some level of zoologist or field ethologist before my disease kicked in heavily, pretty much ruining my chances of making a career of it. Still, for most of my life I’ve been fascinated by animals and zoology, and have certainly come across the observations you mention.
then everts to untrained behavior because the conditional stimulus is substituted for the unconditional stimulus.
That’s a really good point IMO, and is something so easy to stumble up on, at least as an amateur trainer and whatnot. Sideways-related, it’s crazy to me how many tourists annually lose their lives in contact with wild animals, thinking that it’s a ‘petting-zoo’ situation.
Anyway, we may have different inflections upon the cat issue, but I think we’re more or less in the ballpark.
Btw, here’s my favorite webgame du jour. One gets a certain amount of clues and a certain amount of guesses to name the animal, based on the Linnean classification first, with increasingly helpful clues and decreasing points available. It’s tricky! Maybe you’d like it:
Summary: they are all method actors.
