As cat lovers, we all want what’s best for our little feline friends. I’m sure most of you out there have different ways of keeping your cats happy with canned food, new toys, and anything that would keep them entertained for some time. We’re also all too guilty of taking their pictures at every chance we get even when they’re clearly camera-shy. Well turns out, all that camera pointing is going to prove beneficial for them now as there’s an app out there that can tell if your cat is happy or not by pointing the camera in their direction.
Sylvester.ai, an animal health technology company in Alberta, has developed an app called Tably which tells you if your cat is happy or under stress. The app uses machine learning to detect changes in the features of the cat; the head and ear position, whiskers’ movement, and eye-narrowing to detect any distress. It works similar to the FGS or ‘Feline Grimace Scale’, which was proved to be a reliable tool for assessing pain in cats.
Dr. Liz Ruelle of Wild Rose Cat Clinic praised the idea behind the app and said the app could help young veterinarians who do not have enough experience to learn more thoroughly about their furry patients and help them detect if they are in any pain. Alice Potter from British animal charity also advised cat owners to look at different signs on the cat’s whole body to get an idea about how they are feeling. If cats are scared or feel threatened, they would hold their tails really tense and high up and this can also help them detect changes.
Coming from a fellow cat lover, I believe this app has a lot of potential and in the future with better machine learning algorithms, it could also detect changes in the cat’s moods, behavior, eating and sleeping habits by studying the whole-body posture. Who knows, maybe we’ll even be able to tell what our little furry friends are thinking as well!
