Every cat owner has a story of being ignored: we call our cat, he walks away from us, and some of us wonder why we didn’t get a dog. But your cat can be listening. And what’s more, he cares more than you think.
A recent study by French researchers published in the journal Animal Cognition found that cats not only react to what scientists call cat-directed speech—a high-pitched voice similar to the way we speak to babies—but also to who is talking.
“We found that when cats heard their owners use a high-pitched voice, they reacted more than when they heard their owner speak normally to another human adult,” said Charlotte de Mouzon, study author and an expert in feline behavior at Paris Nanterre University. “But what was very surprising in our results was that it didn’t work when it came from the voice of a stranger.”
Unlike dogs, cat behavior is difficult to study, which is why humans understand them less. Cats are often so stressed from being in a laboratory that it is impossible to obtain meaningful behavioral observations. And forget about making a cat stay still for an MRI of its brain.
So the researchers went to the cats’ homes and played recordings of different types of speech and different speakers. At first, De Mouzon and his team were concerned that the cats were not reacting at all. But then they studied video recordings of the encounters.
“His reactions were very subtle,” De Mouzon said. “It could be just moving an ear or turning your head towards the speaker or even freezing what they were doing.”
The findings showed that “cats pay a lot of attention to their keepers, not just what they say, but also how they say it,” said Kristyn Vitale, an assistant professor of animal health and behavior at Unity College in Maine, who was not involved. in the study.
The study complements Vitale’s research on cat-owner relationships. His research has found this relationship to be so important that he replicates the bond between a kitten and his mother. “It is possible that attachment behaviors originally intended for interactions with his mother have now been modified for interactions with her new human caregivers,” she said.
Cats don’t absolutely hate us, Vitale said, adding that “a growing body of work supports the idea that social interaction with humans is key to a cat’s life.”
According to De Mouzon, just because cats react in subtle ways doesn’t mean they’re aloof.
“If the cats don’t come when we call them, it could be because they’re busy doing something else or they’re resting,” she said. “If you call a human when they’re napping on the other side of the house, would they come?”
By: Anthony Ham
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6514792, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-01-02 20:00:06
#cat #ignore