Helmed by Dr Federico Rossano, director of the Comparative Cognition Lab at the University of California San Diego, and Leo Trottier, a PhD candidate, project They Can Talk is one of the latest in a decades-long series of psycholinguistic studies seeking to document non-humans expressing themselves in language-like ways.

The Small Animal Clinic at the University of California at Davis School of Veterinary Medicine took in 32 cats with burn-related injuries over a two-day period, according to the clinic's chief of emergency services, Steven Epstein.