Domestic cats have the particularity of knowing how to use their voice to communicate with their companions. In fact, they rarely meow.
In a new study, researchers John Bradshaw and Charlotte Cameron-Beaumont say that before cats arrived with humans nearly 10,000 years ago, these ancestral cats rarely encountered other members of the species. therefore, it is not necessary to use their own voice to communicate.
Instead, feral cats communicate through their sense of smell, or by rubbing or peeing on objects such as plants. This way, the cat does not have to confront other ferocious cats to send a message.
It’s still mostly how cats communicate with each other, says John Wright, animal behavior psychologist at Mercer University in Georgia.
But humans don’t have a good sense of smell like cats. Thus, cats communicate with humans in such a way that they get what they want by meowing.
Many cats even develop a variety of meows to express different needs and feelings or elicit different responses. For example, your cat might want you to greet each other, call each other friendly to go out, or ask for food with a loud meow.
All cats meow like kittens to get their mother’s attention when they get hurt, get cold, or when mom accidentally sits on them. While domestic cats exhibit this behavior in adulthood, feral cats and unowned domestic cats live outdoors, most grow faster.
A study published in the journal Behavioral Processes also found that feral cats are more likely to growl or howl than domestic cats. Domestic cats meow more often, indicating that they are developing meow as a language reserved for their owner. In other words, a cat meows because he already knows it will get human attention.
If you’re curious about what your cat wants to convey, says Wright, you can encourage her to communicate. If humans respond verbally and pay attention to cat calls and purrs, they can create a two-way conversation that almost feels like a conversation.
“If you give your responses positive enough and predictable enough that they can listen to your voice, then they can try to communicate with you,” Wright added.
