[CAT] "Manipulative meow: Cats learn to vocalize a particular sound to train their human companions"

[rfmcdonald]

Meow?

Although perhaps not as jolting as an alarm clock, a cat’s “soliciting purr” can still pry its owner from sleep. And, when sufficiently annoying, the sound may actually coerce them from bed to fill a food bowl.

This particular meow mix—an embedding of her cat’s high-frequency natural cry within a more pleasant, low-frequency purr—often awakens Karen McComb, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Sussex in the U.K. and lead author of a paper about that sound published today in Current Biology.

“Solicitation purring is probably more acceptable to humans than overt meowing, which is likely to get cats ejected from the bedroom,” McComb said in a statement.

To understand just how cats vocally manipulate owners, including herself, McComb and her team set up a series of experiments. First they recorded the purrs of 10 cats; some were recorded when a cat was actively soliciting food and others in a non-solicitation setting. Fifty people then listened to the sounds at the same volume. Individuals judged pleading purrs as more urgent and less pleasant than normal purrs. When the researchers played the purrs re-synthesized to exclude the hungry cries, leaving all else the same, the volunteers perceived the purrs as far less urgent.

McComb suggests that cats may be cashing in on human's naturally nurturing response to a baby’s cry. Previous studies have shown the cat’s embedded cry shares a similar frequency.

Shakespeare tends to chirp-meow more than purr; actually, he doesn't purr at all. That said, he certainly has me trained. If I don't respond to those endearing sounds, first he walks on me, then he gently nips me or presses his claws softly into my fresh. I've learned to respond it the chirp-meow, so fortunately it doesn't come to that anymore.