Cats Rarely Meow at Other Cats — Do They Save Their Voices for Us? Here’s What We Know

You may have heard that cats only meow for their humans. But is it true? While acknowledging that there are expert groups that support this idea, Carly Moody, an animal science researcher at the University of California, Davis, says, “We just don’t have enough scientific evidence to know whether this is true or not.” »

Moody, whose lab currently studies human-animal interactions, says that most research on these issues relies largely on owners’ reports of their interactions with their cats and their cats’ interactions with other family members, including other pets. Unfortunately, this information is necessarily biased and limited in scope.

But there may be a way to learn more about cat communication.

Learn more: Purrs convey cat identity better than meows – domestication reveals why

How do cats communicate?

In all cases, it is smell, not sound, that is the primary means of communication for cats. When cats rub their faces against your hand or couch, they are rubbing their pheromone glands, leaving scent messages and picking up information, and maybe even telling you they love you.

In an article published in 2002 in the journal Anthrozoawrote the authors: “It has been suggested that cats rub against their human companions for social reasons, as they do with other cats in a group environment, and that the resulting exchange of odors increases the cat’s sense of comfort and security in its home environment. »

Vocalizations, such as meows, are thought to be much less important than these odor exchanges, Moody says.

Chat with your cat

But it’s possible that, for some cats at least, living with a human could increase the importance of vocal communications. After all, when in Rome, do as the Romans do, as the old saying goes.

Moody points out that some research suggests that kittens learn to meow when they are young. A study published in the journal Developmental Psychobiology In 2016, it was discovered that very young kittens communicate vocally with their mothers and can even distinguish their mother’s voice from that of other cats.

When kittens start interacting with people, they learn to communicate with us – and we are one very vocal species.

“We tend to talk to them, so they learn that it’s an effective way to communicate with us and get what they need,” Moody says.

But do cats use meows to communicate with other cats? One way to find out would be to study feral cat colonies. Some research on feral colonies was done in the 1960s and 1970s, Moody says, but those results weren’t very useful.

“They just didn’t report the research methods very well, and so it’s difficult to understand what actually happened and what was evaluated,” she notes.

New ways to study cat communication

However, now that webcams are cheap and shelters are starting to house cats socially rather than in individual cages, researchers might have another opportunity to get it right.

“We’re currently doing research on shelter cats in my lab, and we’ve found that shelter cats are much less active during adoption periods and when the facility is open, and they are very active at night,” Moody says.

“We’re looking at pairs of cats that live together, so it would be very interesting to see if they vocalize to each other, like in these nocturnal interactions where there’s no one there except these two cats,” Moody adds.

The power of meow

Whether or not it’s used exclusively with humans, a cat’s meow is a powerful thing.

“Cats have managed to wrap us around their little paws by mastering the meow,” says Jackson Galaxy, a feline behaviorist and author whose YouTube channel offers advice on living with cats.

One of the cool things about cats is that they are self-domesticated, Galaxy says. “They favored homes where the food was good and the house was warm. They did what they had to do.”

And that gentle meow was probably very helpful in this process.

“The sound of meowing is something that humans respond to, and so cats continue this cycle of self-domestication and play humans like fiddles by making the meow,” Galaxy explains.

Learn more: What cats reveal about how COVID can persist in the human immune system

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