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Cat-human communication: the 8 types of signals a cat uses to communicate are classified. The Meowsic project has just started.
Classified by Linnaeus as early as 1758, felis catus, or domestic cat, has lived with us for over 10,000 years and is one of the most widespread domestic animals in the world – with over 600 million individuals.
Susanne Schötz, a linguist at Lund University in Sweden, has spent her entire life as a researcher collecting, defining and classifying various cat ‘vocalizations’. This not only earned her a well-deserved IG Nobel Prize, but shed light on how cats communicate with us and how we perceive their way of communicating.
Eight kinds of feline vocalizations
Cats don’t just meow, anyone who lives with a little cat knows it perfectly well: squeaks, murmurs, chirps and growling are part of the repertoire of vocalizations that cats have apparently developed to better communicate with their human friends.
According to Schötz, domestic cats have a “more extensive, variable and complex” vocal repertoire than other members of the mammalian order. This can be explained by their social organization, but also by their close relationships with mother cats and humans.
Research begins with the noises they make with their mouths closed: those typical of purring, but also the growling between chirps and purring that cats make when they approach a friend, be it a feline or a human. These are vocalizations and generally mean “I am not a threat” or “Keep doing what you are doing”.
These include mouth-opening, meowing, the quick squeal that cats use to communicate with each other, and the typical whine of cats wanting something, a kind of silent meowing that usually demands food or attention.
Not all meows are the same: in addition to the assertive or friendly meows typical of feline conversations, there is a specific functional meow developed by cats primarily to communicate with humans, which can be identified by the obvious “ow” sound, not always contained in a cat communication.
Other sounds made by cats are generally related to the context of an attack or defense: growling, hissing just before an attack, whimpering, single chirps directed at the victim, and that strange way of mimicking the victim that sounds like crazy cluckle. Among the signals directed to the victims, he also distinguishes “telephone-like” squeals from weaker ones, which mimic the victim’s chirping par excellence.
The Miausica Project
The research into the vocalization of domestic cats is part of a larger research project, sponsored of course by Dr. Schötz, called Meowsic – translated into Italian as “Miausica” or something like that.
The two-part project aims to investigate “the prosodic characteristics of feline vocalizations and communication between humans and cats”. The first step in the project is precisely what over the years has allowed to classify all the most common expressions of domestic cats in linguistic and phonetic terms.
Research has shown that “positive meows” are generally characterized by a short duration and rising pitch, while expressions of anger or frustration have a longer duration and some downward melody.
The second part of the study, which has just begun, aims to examine “how people perceive cats’ vocal cues”. After examining how cats change pitch when they address other cats and when they communicate with humans, Schötz’s team looks at how cats perceive human speech directed at them.
Research will investigate whether cats can recognize familiar voices from strangers, sayings directed at them from those directed at other people, and whether they have a preferred pitch pattern.
