Feline Assistance

POP CULTURE HOLDS that if you're trapped in a well, Lassie will lead the way to a rescue-but if you're stuck with Garfield, you'd better have some lasagna in your pocket. And research suggests such stereotypes aren't far off.

- Anirban Mukhopadhyay

Scientists compared 19 children between 16 and 24 months old with 38 untrained pet dogs and 22 cats, asking a simple question: Who will spontaneously respond when a human appears to need help? In the experiment, a familiar caregiver-the child's parent or the pet's owner-interacted with a sponge before turning away. Then an experimenter hid it in full view of the study subject. Across three trials of decreasing difficulty-when the sponge was unreachable and covered, then visible but out of reach, then fully reachable-the person searched, repeating, "I can't find it. What should I do?" but never directly addressing the subject.