Study: Cats control you with meows!

Researcher: Cats have learned to adapt their cries
Updated: Tuesday, 14 Jul 2009, 11:50 AM EDT
Published : Tuesday, 14 Jul 2009, 11:49 AM EDT

By LILY FU, Special Contributor
You may think your cat sees you as its owner, but a new study finds that the cat owns you.

LiveScience.com reports that many cats use a kind of meow that's a mix of a purr and a high-pitched cry when they want to be fed. Unlike other meows, many people find this kind of cry difficult to ignore.

"The embedding of a cry within a call that we normally associate with contentment is quite a subtle means of eliciting a response," said Karen McComb of the University of Sussex, who conducted the study. "Solicitation purring is probably more acceptable to humans than overt meowing, which is likely to get cats ejected from the bedroom."

Researchers collected 10 cat cries from different owners. They were then played back for 50 people, not all of whom owned cats. The majority of people found the high-pitched meow mixed with the purr as more urgent and less pleasant as compared to the cries that didn't have the underlying purr.

McComb said she believes that humans are wired to respond to the cries of human babies -- when babies cry, people come to their aid as part of a nurturing instinct. Cats have learned to adapt their cries so that they make it difficult for humans to ignore as they can't with human baby cries.

Cats may have the same method of getting what they want. But they don't all sound the same. The cat in the video below has a very interesting way of saying "hello."