Cats choosily respond to their owner's voice with an increase in certain behaviors.
The person is Christa Lesté-Lasserre.
Cats like to listen to their owner's voice.
The images are by Adenenchez.
Cats that are indoors react more to their owners speaking in a high-pitched voice than they do to strangers.
Cats only seem to respond when the speaker is their owner, unlike dogs, who only respond when their owner tells them. Cats and humans communicate through their own unique form of communication, which may suggest that they live together.
A group of 16 cats, 9 male and 7 female, living in small studio apartments, either as single pets with a female owner, or in pairs of cats with a heterosexual couple, were tested by de Mouzon and her colleagues. The cats ranged in age from 8 months to 2 years old, and their owners were all veterinary students at the National Veterinary School.
The team recorded the owners speaking in French to their cats at home as they called the pet by name. One of the contexts the owners made a statement about was. "Do you want to play?", "Do you want to eat?", and "How are you?" The team recorded the pet owners saying the same things to people but in different ways.
The voices of sixteen women, who are not known by the cats, were recorded as they said the same four statements to adult humans or to cats they saw in videos.
The cats heard all the recordings in their own homes, and when they heard their owners' voices, they changed their behavior, like looking around, or even moving their ears and tails.
The cats didn't listen when strangers called them by name and invited them to play or eat. She says that it could be related to the fact that the cats were only allowed to stay indoors.
She says the findings show that cats have developed strong social cognitive skills.
It is a good way for cats to know that we are talking to them. We should be confident in talking to our cats with this type of talk.
There is a journal reference to animal Cognition.
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