The cat’s meow garners results
By Kulbinder Saran Caldwell - Published on Monday, 10 May 2010 21:00
Many pet owners are awaken by their pets demanding their attention. In the case of cats, not only do they get the attention but they can actually make their owner take the action they want with a simple purr.
According to Karen McComb, a U.K. behavioral ecologist from the University of Sussex and cat owner, a cat’s “soliciting purr” can wake up its owner and if it is sufficiently bothersome to them they will be encouraged out of bed to fill the food bowl.
“Solicitation purring is probably more acceptable to humans than overt meowing, which is likely to get cats ejected from the bedroom,” McComb continued. The lead author of a paper published in Current Biology describes the mewl as - an embedding of the cat’s high-frequency natural cry within a more pleasant, low-frequency purr.
McComb and her team conducted a study to understand how cats vocally influenced their owners. They recorded the purrs of 10 cats; some were actively soliciting food and others in a non-solicitation setting. Then fifty people listened to the sounds at the same volume. They studied their individual responses. Some felt that the pleading purrs were more urgent and less pleasant than normal purrs. In the second phase, the researchers played the purrs re-synthesized to exclude the hunger cries but left everything else the same and the volunteers thought the purrs sounded less urgent.
The paper states that cats may be relying on a human’s nurturing instincts that come out in response to a baby’s cry. Previous research indicates that the cat’s embedded cry shares a similar frequency to that of a baby.
C.A. Tony Buffington, an Ohio State University professor of veterinary medicine responded to the research saying that like babies, domestic cats are “completely dependent on us for their survival”. The scholar explains, “Any time an animal is in that situation, they are going to be scrutinizing their caregivers for any response to any signal they are sending out. Whatever works, they’re going to do it - whether that’s changing a purr, or doing figure eights between their owner’s feet.”
Although Buffington was not involved in the study, he sees potential in applying the findings at his veterinary hospital to find out what a cat is experiencing and what it needs. He says that, “Now, we can look at it in much deeper way. Here’s something that everyone’s probably observed, but no one has paid attention to.”
So the next time you hear your cat purring you may want to listen a little closer...and you may very well hear what they are asking you.
Source: “Manipulative meow: Cats learn to vocalize a particular sound to train their human companions." Scientificamerican.com.