In my experience: yes. People have different sized hands, use varying amounts of pressure, different motions, etc.
this post was submitted on 31 Dec 2025
89 points (100.0% liked)
No Stupid Questions
45107 readers
2332 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Not always. I was at my sister's house and her cat was not over-fond of me. That bothered me because cats normally adore me. At one point, the cat was half-snoozing on a stool so I reached over to give him a pet. At first he started to purr and stretched out. Yes! Thought I, finally making friends. Then he looked over his shoulder and saw it was me. He hissed and ran to the other side of the room and started cleaning himself. I'd have been hurt if his expression hadn't been so funny when he realized that it wasn't my sister petting him.
Yes. All animals know exactly which human is touching them. They know who every human is, where they live, and their fears.
If a lion named duke that lives in Kenya ever gets to North America I am FUCKED.
Not the best answer as I'm no biology major, but from my understanding, they can smell just as well. So they likely know who's closest to them and figure it out.
I had a deaf cat a while back and when she was just chilling in her tree seat looking out the window and I would let her, she would flip out and bite at me until she could see me lol.
my cat absolutely not. She was the runt of the litter and is kinda shy because of it. Anytime she gets touched she will immediately look at what touched her and probably run away if it isn't me.
I'm the only thing she really trusts and oh boy is she comfortable around me
her face shows so many different emotions
Which borderlands is that and how well does it run on the deck?
It looks like two(the best one). And given that it came out in 2012, I would imagine it runs well, but I cannot answer that part.
it is 2 and it runs perfectly. I just got to the area that has the invisible teleporting dogs and they're so hard to hit on controller :/
I am not jealous of your pain. Enjoy the run! Hands down my favorite borderlands game. Fell off hard after two in my humble opinion.
it is 2 and it runs perfectly. I just got to the area that has the invisible teleporting dogs and they're so hard to hit on controller :/
I asked my dog and she said "shut up and pet me".
You could be rich with that talking dog
What do you put on the top of a house? Roof!
Whats on the side of a tree? Bark!
Shes quite talented.
What was that 80s TV show about the alien who lives with the family? Arf!
Close enough! What a smart girl!
Cats and dogs - absolutely. Humans are smelly:)
And their hearing is good. They know who you are by how you walk.
Nope. I lived with a girl, and we got cats. Lived with her for the next 4 years with those cats.
We fell apart as a couple. I assumed she was going to take the cats. I wasn't stopping her. But she wanted nothing to do with the cats.
Which, truth be told, was the outcome I wanted anyways. The cats always loved me more than her.
But for the next 10 years, anytime they'd be sleeping, and I'd pet them, they always snapped their heads up to see who it is.
It's me. It's always me.
I can get why they'd have that reaction for the first year. Still in the habbit of multiple people living with them.
But they ALWAYS checked, everytime, until the day they died. They were happy to see me, everytime, but they still checked.
they would do that even if you were single their whole life. if someone touches you, you just look at them, that is natural reaction, that doesn't mean they wonder who is petting them.
and that is for cats. asking if dog, who can track 24 hour old track using just nose, knows who is petting them, is just laughable.
Some cats are just weird like that. I've had many cats in my life, but this litter of 4 I got 4 yrs ago, each of them act spooked as hell when I touch them, then they're like Oh, ok. Makes me feel like a jerk for disturbing them 😂
People often touch vastly differently from one another. I would assume a dog would become familiar with those who pet them often.
My partner and I pet our cat in very different ways and I truly believe that were our cat blind, she would be able to tell immediately.
My cat could. But only because I would rub my fingers together to make a faint noise, so they could tell where my hand was without looking.
It significantly reduced the number of surprises, and they felt a lot more comfortable around me.
I'm going to try that, I feel bad spooking my cats
Yes. I guess it does depend on the pet a little bit -- the ants in your ant farm probably cannot. ;)
I feel like my cat can because it rarely looks up and I just snuck up behind it. Either that or it sucks at survival (it doesn't, it is jumpy beyond reason at almost everything else).
I assume it's more than the petnique though, and includes step noise and scent.
All cats I've ever had always looked up to see who was petting them. They usually didn't mind any of us petting them, but they always looked.
that's how they say hello
I would imagine so - smell alone probably gives them a pretty accurate idea, but people also pet differently (probably not as uniquely as a fingerprint but differently enough)
Some people are heavy petters some light, some only pet in one direction, some only pet certain areas (head only, flank only, etc.) And so on.
I would assume many dogs could but IDK about cats or others. Most dog breeds could smell you coming without seeing or hearing you.
Of course, at least under normal circumstances.
Like humans or wild animals, a pet is going to have their full sensory array available. Even a blind and deaf animal can pick up vibrations as someone approaches then, feel changes in air movement, etc.
Since hands are different sizes, even if they were asleep at the moment of contact, it wouldn't take long to figure out whose hand was on them. Obviously , that might be negated if the hands are similar enough, but I would suspect that even then the differences in how a person pets them would be useful.
You could likely create a situation to bypass everything and "fool" a pet, but that's what you'd have to do.
Yes
Source: am dog
Depends how smelly you are