You may want to examine whether your cat is ignoring you or not responding to your calls for affection.
Research on 16 cats has shown that feline pets recognize their owners voice. They are also more responsive to their owners’ voices than to other people.
At the sound of a familiar voice, the cats in the study often froze, tails flicking, eyes blinking, or ears twitching – but only when the words were spoken in a register reserved for a cutie pie fluff ball with li’l bitty paws and a big old tum-tum.
If the owner spoke the same sentence in their normal human voice, the cats could sense that it wasn’t being directed at them.
Human speech is known for its repetitive, high-pitched sounds and short, sharp utterances. directed to pets or infants. For instance, dogs have been shown to sense both Tone and meaningListen to their owner.
Experiments are actually quite common 2017 2018A study found that pet owners use “dog talk” to communicate with their dog, such as “Who’s the good boy?”It attracts the dog’s attention and affection better than any speech intended for humans.
Past Research also suggests humans use a specific register to speak to their cats – introducing more sensual ‘breathy’ qualities to signal friendliness and closeness. Although it is not known whether cats are interested in it.
The current experiments, however, are the first to examine how cats react to cat-directed speech in comparison to human-directed speech.
Researchers found that cats are able to distinguish between speech directed at them and speech addressed specifically to them, just like dogs.
This was true only if the sentences were spoken in cat-directed ways. The pet didn’t seem to be interested in hearing a stranger speak in the same cat-directed manner. They went about their normal business as before.
These findings indicate that adult house cats who are not used to being around strangers only have learned to understand the subtleties of their owners’ speech. This suggests that a cat-human relationship might be more close than innate preferences for intimate, friendly qualities in a human voice.
Future experiments will examine whether cats who have been socialized more are able to respond better to speech from strangers. Cats at cat cafes are one example. They appear highly tuned for human speechThey have also learned the names of other cats and their own names.
The current study’s house cats, however, lived in studio apartments with one owner.
Experiments were carried out in each cat’s room to reduce stress from unknown elements. Although their owner was present in the room at all times, they sat quietly and did not interact during the trial.
The cat would then be played by the experimenter who had previously met it. These recordings were made during the natural interactions between cat and owner.
The pet owner then recorded the exact words that they spoke to their cat in a tone appropriate for another person. The owner was then taped by a stranger who copied the tone and words of the owner in all scenarios.
The final audio was only played to a house cat. It did not change the cat’s behavior if the owner spoke in a cat-directed manner. A cat might, for example, stop meowing or look at the sound and instead groom itself. Sometimes, the cat might respond less clearly, turning their ears to their owner’s voice and looking uninterested.
The cat’s behavior remained the same when a stranger’s voice or their owner’s voice were heard.
Although the study was limited to a few pets and all had similar lifestyles, the authors believe their findings can be a useful starting point in understanding how pets may understand us.
“[O]”Our results show that indoor companion cat relationships are important. They don’t seem to be able to transfer the communication they have with one human to all other humans,” the authors stated. Write.
The study was published in Animal Cognition.
