Cats in Control

From the AAHA NewStat:

As if you didn’t already know it, a new study says that cats manipulate their human “masters” by using different types of meows.

For the study, which appears in the July 14 issue of Current Biology, the researchers recorded the vocalizations of 10 cats that were soliciting food from their owners. The so-called “solicitation purr” was found to have a high-frequency component similar to a cry. When the recordings were played for test subjects (some of whom had no experience with cats), people found the solicitation purrs to be urgent-sounding and not that pleasant.

The scientists discuss how “the structure of solicitation purrs may be exploiting an inherent mammalian sensitivity to acoustic cues relevant in the context of nurturing offspring.”