Cats exploit humans through purring

[Lonestar]

From the Beeb

Cats 'exploit' humans by purring
By Victoria Gill
Science reporter, BBC News



Cat owners may have suspected as much, but it seems our feline friends have found a way to manipulate us humans.

Researchers at the University of Sussex have discovered that cats use a "soliciting purr" to overpower their owners and garner attention and food.

Unlike regular purring, this sound incorporates a "cry", with a similar frequency to a human baby's.

The team said cats have "tapped into" a human bias - producing a sound that humans find very difficult to ignore.

Dr Karen McComb, the lead author of the study that was published in the journal Current Biology, said the research was inspired by her own cat, Pepo.

"He would wake me up in the morning with this insistent purr that was really rather annoying," Dr McComb told BBC News.

"After a little bit of investigation, I discovered that there are other cat owners who are similarly bombarded early in the morning."

While meowing might get a cat expelled from the bedroom, Dr McComb said that this pestering purr often convinced beleaguered pet lovers to get up and fill their cat's bowl.

To find out why, her team had to train cat owners to make recordings of their own cats' vocal tactics - recording both their "soliciting purrs" and regular, "non-soliciting" purrs.

"When we played the recordings to human volunteers, even those people with no experience of cats found the soliciting purrs more urgent and less pleasant," said Dr McComb.

How annoying?

She and her team also asked the volunteers to rate the different purrs - giving them a score based on how urgent and pleasant they perceived them to be.

"We could then relate the scores back to the specific purrs," explained Dr McComb. "The key thing (that made the purrs more unpleasant and difficult to ignore) was the relative level of this embedded high-frequency sound."

"When an animal vocalises, the vocal folds (or cords) held across the stream of air snap shut at a particular frequency," explained Dr McComb. The perceived pitch of that sound depends on the size, length and tension of the vocal folds.

"But cats are able to produce a low frequency purr by activating the muscles of their vocal folds - stimulating them to vibrate," explained Dr McComb.

Since each of these sounds is produced by a different mechanism, cats are able to embed a high-pitched cry in an otherwise relaxing purr.

"How urgent and unpleasant the purr is seems to depend on how much energy the cat puts into producing that cry," said Dr McComb.

Previous studies have found similarities between a domestic cat's cry and the cry of a human baby - a sound that humans are highly sensitive to.

Dr McComb said that the cry occurs at a low level in cats' normal purring. "But we think that (they) learn to dramatically exaggerate it when it proves effective in generating a response from humans."

She added that the trait seemed to most often develop in cats that have a one-on-one relationship with their owners.

"Obviously we don't know what's going on inside their minds," said Dr McComb. "But they learn how to do this, and then they do it quite deliberately."

So how does Dr McComb feel about Pepo now she knows he has been manipulating her all these years?

"He's been the inspiration for this whole study, so I'll forgive him - credit where credit's due."

My cats do this, so this falls under the "color me shocked" criteria.

[Darth Wong]

A dog's plaintive yelp when it is hurt or upset is very similar: unlike an aggressive bark, it is a high-pitched keening cry that (at least for me) triggers a lot of the same instincts that I feel when I am around an upset baby.

[tim31]

Question though Mike; when it's someone else's crying baby are you thinking 'I should pick (the baby) up and settle her/him', or '(baby's mother) should stop ignoring him/her.' Does the yelp scenario apply to both?

[Darth Wong]

Question though Mike; when it's someone else's crying baby are you thinking 'I should pick (the baby) up and settle her/him', or '(baby's mother) should stop ignoring him/her.' Does the yelp scenario apply to both?

What difference does it make? In both cases, it bothers you. You feel that someone should help this baby. That's the point.

[tim31]

Just a difference in empathy, I'm supposing. I know the ends are the same, but the point of the OP is that a purr gets the job done more efficiently than a yowl. One is endearing(if you're a cat person), the other annoying. With a baby, the urge to do something is still there, regardless of the emotional reaction to the singular crying noise. Of course, this is because a socially well adjusted person will be more inclined to care for a human infant, whereas cats have a less broad appeal.

[Oskuro]

My reaction to a crying baby is a tad more hostile though.... Ok, my mental reaction, I've never done anything hostile, but my imagination just keeps compelling me to ROAR at the baby and shut him up.

What I find amazing about the study is not that the cats might have somehow developed this trait, but that they learn to do it, as in they consciously choose to use it. Fascinating how smart they really are, and how they adapt to their environment.

[Batman]

Can't say I ever noticed any of that when we had a cat at home, but then, since clawing the wallpaper off the walls and/or drooling on my face was a surefire way to wake me up (and since I was up I might as well feed/let out/both the Valendamned cat) maybe he never felt the need for more subtle measures
Besides, for us cat people the ordinary purr seems to work just fine. I WILL go to the bathroom if I need to despite having a sleeping or Valen forbid PURRING cat in my lap, but I always feel like a total heel when I do.

[Terralthra]

I know for sure that my cat has figured out a vocalization that sounds like "whining," if I anthropomorphize it. It's hard to describe objectively; it just sounds like she's unhappy, in human terms. It's impossible for me to tell if she's truly as unhappy as the sound seems to me, or if she's figured out that this particular intonation gets her more rapid attention so she uses it.

[Oskuro]

Can't say I ever noticed any of that when we had a cat at home

The article states that this behaviour is more often seen when cats have a one-on-one relation to their owners. I take this to mean someone living alone with the cat, wich seems not to be your case (bolded text), so that might be why you never noticed such a thing. I personally have had lots of cats all through my life, and never noticed said behaviour, but then again, they were all within my familiy, and hardly on such a one-on-one relationship with a human.

On the other hand, a Cocker Spainel we had eventually learned to make a particular kind of low pitch growl to indicate he wanted to be taken for a walk. The amazement at such intelligence stood in stark contrast to how completely incapable he was of stopping himself from raiding the thrash can when we were not home, even when he knew he would be punished, as demonstrated by him submissively waiting before the door to the room we locked him in as punishment before we knew he had done it.

[Batman]

Possibly because h knew the punishment would be rather benign?

And no, Cleo wasn't MY cat, he was the family cat. But he might as well have been. I was the one who would let him out in the mornings (admittedly mostly because I was the only one soppy (stupid?) enough to leave my room's door open, I was the one whose wardrobe he'd sleep in, I was the one whose face he'd drool on in the morning. But then again, as I already said, I was already a sucker for him anyway so maybe he just figured I didn't warrant the extra effort

[Oskuro]

Possibly because h knew the punishment would be rather benign?

No, I think it had to do more with the fact that Coker Spainels have no self control.

[LaCroix]

My cats do this a lot. It's an high puring - like 'briiiii', and it's fantastic how relyable it works.

They also have adopted the practice of "taking back" when sent out of a room. They will walk out if told to do so, but while walking out, they will talk back in an annoyed meow-sequence. It's hillarious.

[EarthScorpion]

I know for sure that my cat has figured out a vocalization that sounds like "whining," if I anthropomorphize it. It's hard to describe objectively; it just sounds like she's unhappy, in human terms. It's impossible for me to tell if she's truly as unhappy as the sound seems to me, or if she's figured out that this particular intonation gets her more rapid attention so she uses it.

I've noticed the same with the family cat. And, worse, I've actually watched her change it. She used to have two separate... well, I can't render it in text, but it was sort of a mix between a meow and a sort of moaning-complaining noise. One was deeper and gentler, the other was more intense and higher pitched. The former used to be used for when she wanted food, the latter for water. I learned to tell them apart, and used to ignore the "food" one if it wasn't her feeding time.

Lucky learnt that if she used the "water" one, she got someone to come through. So she started using it for both food and water.

At least from my anecdotal experience, she learned to cry wolf to get people to consider feeding her more.

[frogcurry]

Its been known for a long time that a cat will eventually start to vocalise their meows at a lower frequency (within human hearing range) when speaking to humans, as a result of realising that their silent meows (higher frequency) don't get the desired reaction. My sisters 2 yr old shelter cat didn't meow in a range you could hear when she first got her, but now (about 1 yr later) its learnt to meow so you can hear it (and now it rules the house...).

So this seems to be the same principle again, cats just adjust their vocal behaviour for optimum results when interacting with people.