> [!tldr] Some cats raised in a world of only vertical lines didn't comprehend horizontalness This is one of those studies that sounds almost too fascinating to be true. Some cats were raised from birth to the age of 6 months in rooms specially designed for them to live. They had curved walls, painted with black and white *vertical* stripes. The cats were not allowed to leave the room at any point. Their entire world was literally composed of vertical lines. After these 6 months these vertical kittens were introduced to objects: tables, desks, etc. They didn't react to the horizontalness. When lowered down onto the surface of the table, they didn't extend their legs to stand like a normal cat would. Instead they were surprised when the table hit their legs. When a plane of plexiglass with horizontal lines was introduced, they would *run into it*. **They didn't perceive these new objects because they had no prior experience with anything like it**. The same study was repeated with horizontal cats. They were similarly completely unaware of verticalness. When introduced to vertically oriented straight lines, they couldn't perceive them. In both cases - each group of cats was effectively normal after roughly 10 hours out of their singular-orientation world into the real world. **** # More ## Source - [[How Minds Change]]