Further to Amy’s post about giving cats a taste of their own medicine, I happened across a story in the Guardian about new cat research. Researchers at the University of Sussex have decoded some feline purrs, noting that what they call “solicitation” purrs are specially geared to exploit the human need to nurture. From the story:
Instead of loud miaowing when they want food, behaviour likely to have them ejected from the bedroom, some cats disguise their cries for attention within an otherwise pleasant purr. The result, according to a study published tonight in the journal Current Biology, is a complex “solicitation” purr with a high-frequency element that triggers a sense of urgency in the human brain. Owners find it irritating, but not irritating enough to kick the cat out, and feel driven to respond.
Dr. Karen McCamb noticed the behaviour in her own cat, and decided to investigate:
After testing human responses to different purring types, McComb and her team found that even those with no experience of cats judged the “solicitation” purr to be more urgent and less pleasant.
On examining the frequency of the special purr, she found a peak similar to that of a baby’s cry, which gave it a “noisy, slightly whiny quality”.
However, not all cats have the cry; the researchers, who examined 10 cats, found it only in those living in single-person households. “We found that cats learn to dramatically emphasise the peak when dealing with human owners that have a one-on-one relationship,” McComb said.
There’s some more detail in the story, but the real interesting part is listening to samples of cat purrs on the study’s website, where you can hear — at least, I could definitely hear — the different sound quality. There’s also a video of the solicitation behaviour.
And I recognized it right away, didn’t I, Shadow? Oh yes I did, Miss Shadow-wadow. Oh, yes I did! Ohhhh.
Grant Hamilton
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Stumpy