Cats Know How to Control Humans, Study Finds

Status
Not open for further replies.
G

GrnMarvl14

Lying
Joined
Jan 4, 2003
Messages
13,846
Reaction score
4
Source.

If you've ever wondered who's in control, you or your cat, a new study points to the obvious. It's your cat.

Household cats exercise this control with a certain type of urgent-sounding, high-pitched meow, according to the findings.

This meow is actually a purr mixed with a high-pitched cry. While people usually think of cat purring as a sign of happiness, some cats make this purr-cry sound when they want to be fed.

The study showed that humans find these mixed calls annoying and difficult to ignore.

"The embedding of a cry within a call that we normally associate with contentment is quite a subtle means of eliciting a response," said Karen McComb of the University of Sussex in southern England. "Solicitation purring is probably more acceptable to humans than overt meowing, which is likely to get cats ejected from the bedroom."

They know us

Previous research has shown similarities between cat cries and human infant cries.

McComb suggests that the purr-cry may subtly take advantage of humans' sensitivity to cries they associate with nurturing offspring. Also, including the cry within the purr could make the sound "less harmonic and thus more difficult to habituate to," she said.

McComb got the idea for the study from her experience with her own cat, who would consistently wake her up in the mornings with a very insistent purr.

After speaking with other cat owners, she learned that some of their cats also made the same type of call.

As a scientist who studies vocal communication in mammals, she decided to investigate the manipulative meow.

Tough to test

Setting up the experiments wasn't easy. While the felines used purr-cries around their familiar owners, they were not eager to make the same cries in front of strangers.

So McComb and her team trained cat owners to record their pets' cries — capturing the sounds made by cats when they were seeking food and when they were not.

In all, the team collected recordings from 10 different cats.

The researchers then played the cries back for 50 human participants, not all of whom owned cats.

They found that humans, even if they had never had a cat themselves, judged the purrs recorded while cats were actively seeking food — the purrs with an embedded, high-pitched cry — as more urgent and less pleasant than those made in other contexts.

When the team re-synthesised the recorded purrs to remove the embedded cry, leaving all else unchanged, the human subjects' urgency ratings for those calls decreased significantly.

McComb said she thinks this cry occurs at a low level in cats' normal purring, "but we think that cats learn to dramatically exaggerate it when it proves effective in generating a response from humans."

In fact, not all cats use this form of purring at all, she said, noting that it seems to most often develop in cats that have a one-on-one relationship with their owners rather than those living in large households, where their purrs might be overlooked.

The results were published in the July 14 issue of the journal Current Biology.
Click to expand...

Not exactly a secret that cats are controlling people. But it's nice to see it scientifically proven.
 
Dogs know how too. They just do it differently.

And why is my parakeet trying to get my attention?
 
Last edited:
Anyone who grew up on Garfield and Friends knows this. I guess humans have just finally realized who really rules the world.
 
I KNEW MY CAT WAS EVIL!!!!

*shot*

Luckily I was wearing a bullet-proof vest:sweatlol:

Anyway, I know my cat controls me when she meows. She's so cute!
 
the gadfly said:
Dogs know how too. They just do it differently.

And why is my parakeet trying to get my attention?
Click to expand...

LOL

Dogs are cute and no human being could possible deny them something they want. Cats get irritating after a while. I swear my cat knows exactly how to bug me until I give it some food.
 
I just find it funny that it took this long before humans figure this out. Even scientifically.
 
I'm actually playing fetch with my cat right now as I type this... Of course I'm trained!

What's funny is that my current furbabies don't make that purring meow. My cats in the past have, but not these guys. They each have their own specific call for food, one cat will even meow for water. Ah, I love them. :)
 
IT TOOK A STUDY TO FIGURE THIS OUT?

I know that purr-meow sound, it's the cutest in the world, and it really does make you want to feed them.
 
Of course. That cats control humans is just obvious. I mean, they know how to get just what they want when they want. At least mine does. She doesn't let you sleep when she wants something. Just meow meow meow. Or she throws your belongings on the floor. We may think we're running the house, however, the cat runs us.

See, they were worshipped in ancient Egypt. They have never forgotten this.
 
I've never had a cat that did these types of cries. I had a half-Siamese cat that would howl (I swear to god, like a friggen wolf) but that was because she was in heat and we locked her in the house. I fed my cats when I felt like it.
 
I read something similar of this on Yahoo. Lol I feel lucky to have a dog. Although, I think he controls the family too. Whenever he wants to go outside, he starts getting it on with my mom's leg :p
 
If anyone here has read the Warriors books by Erin Hunter, then this makes those books seem rather realistic.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom