A familiar scene for cat owners: you talk to your pet cat and it responds with a meow. It is even possible for a person to recognize different tones of meows that mean different things. But did you know that cats meow just to communicate with people?
A recent study revealed that cats meow primarily to communicate with humans, especially their owners. Cats’ communication with their peers is hardly ever done with meows, the researchers commented.
Cats meow only at humans
Dogs often bark at both humans and other dogs. But between cats and humans, meows are almost exclusively dedicated to the latter. In fact, feral cats are capable of meowing on very few occasions. This is to mark territory or to attract a mate. But domestic cats meow constantly.
This is why researchers are working on the possibility that the meow is a product of domestication and socialization with humans. The thesis is that meows are capable of attracting people’s attention and that is why they emit them.
Let’s remember that there are about 600 million cats living with humans around the world. This history of domestication dates back to about 7,000 years before Christ, according to some sources. During the process, it is very likely that some behavioral characteristics of these domestic felines have changed to adapt to domestication.
What is true is that we expect our cats to meow, both as a kind of response to our words and as a way of asking for different things. Precisely the meow is a communicational act.
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