A woman works from home in the presence of her cat Eva Plevier (Portal)
Maria puts the key in the lock of her door. He’s had a long day at work, but he’s finally home. As always, her cat lovingly welcomes her in the hallway. Other days, the first thing Maria did when she arrived was pet her pet, but this time she’s so tired she flops down on the sofa without even taking off her coat.
Then her cat stares at her and says:
-meow.
To which Maria replies in a higher voice, as if addressing a baby:
“What is Leia? Did you miss me? Of course, of course, how can you not miss me when you’ve been alone all day. Come here, I’ll spoil you.”
A typical example of human-cat communication has occurred. For one, Maria spoke in a very different style than she would an adult. His tone was sharper and more variable, his facial expressions shorter and more repetitive, he spoke slowly and he asked questions which he immediately answered himself. On the other hand, the cat said meow. Just as dogs bark at both humans and other dogs, cats meow almost exclusively at humans and rarely use this vocalization in their own kind.
Humans and cats adapt our communication style by interacting with each other, but is that good for anything? Does Maria understand her cat’s meowing? Can you recognize Leia when Maria speaks to her? Only in recent years has science attempted to answer these questions.
The cat meows practically only to humans, they rarely use this vocalization in their own kind
Around 600 million cats live with humans worldwide. These cats make very popular pets, not only for practical reasons, but also for their ability to communicate and bond with people. In fact, cats have the most complex vocal repertoire of any carnivore.
Although there are likely more, science has documented them using up to 21 different vocalizations in their interactions. Among all, meowing is the most popular to communicate with us. Feral cats meow only occasionally to mark territory or to attract a mate, but domestic cats do so constantly when interacting with humans.
For this reason, it is believed that meowing may be a product of feline domestication and socialization with humans. It’s possible that cats that can meow were better able to capture our attention and gain some benefit from doing so. Now, that doesn’t mean humans know how to interpret meows well.
More information:
In 2020, a study from the University of Milan wanted to find out if we could distinguish cats’ acoustic meows in three different situations: waiting for food, brushing, or isolation in an unfamiliar environment. Study participants did fairly poorly on the task: food was the only context in which they were slightly more correct than might be expected by chance.
This can lead to frustration when a cat meows persistently and the context doesn’t help us identify the cause. However, the good news is that when the participant was the cat’s owner, they did a lot more right, so the experience with our pet can help us understand them better. Females, on the other hand, did not fare as poorly as males, consistent with previous findings. They have been shown to tend to be more perceptive when it comes to interpreting emotions in both humans and other animals. A year earlier, another study had shown that humans can recognize different moods by looking at cats’ facial expressions, and that women are better at this than men.
What do you think?
It’s quite a challenge for science to study what’s going on in the minds of cats when we communicate with them, because these animals don’t like the lab at all. Once they step out of their comfort zone, they become so stressed that any study conducted in these conditions is effectively rendered obsolete. One solution is to conduct the experiments in the homes where the cats live so that they feel safe and relaxed.
Using this technique, a recently published study examined whether cats know how to identify themselves when we speak to them. The researchers placed speakers in the room where the cat was and played audio from different people saying phrases like “Do you want to play?” “How are you?” “Bye!”
Sometimes these phrases carried the typical intonation we use when addressing a pet, and sometimes they carried the intonation we use among adult humans. They recorded the cats’ reactions so they could analyze them in detail, noting every movement, from turning their ears to changing their gaze. They showed that cats distinguish between the two types of intonation and know when they are spoken to, but only when their owner is speaking.
These results are consistent with another study conducted twenty years earlier. In this case, several people had to try to interact with an unfamiliar cat. They found that the fact that the participant spoke to the cat did not help it get closer to them, it was even counterproductive when it was a boy and used a lot of imperatives. The only factor that clearly affected the amount of time the animal spent with the subject was how much or how little the subject liked cats. Although all humans seemed to behave the same way, the cat could tell by the intricacies of body language those who were looking at him kindly.
The results of these studies should be taken with caution, as science is only just taking its first steps in studying how cats and humans communicate. Without further elaborating, only one cat participated in the previous experiment, and to extrapolate the behavior of an individual in any way is premature. Likewise, only 16 cats responded to the recordings in their homes. Many more studies are needed before we can draw more definitive conclusions about the understanding between cats and humans.
you can follow MATTER on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, or sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.