(LiveScience) Cats do control humans, study finds: If you've ever wondered who's in control, you or your cat, a new study points to the obvious. It's your cat. Household cats exercise this control with a certain type of urgent-sounding, high-pitched meow, according to findings. This meow is actually a purr mixed with a high-pitched cry.
While people usually think of cat purring as a sign of happiness, some cats make this purr-cry sound when they want to be fed. The study showed that humans find these mixed calls annoying and difficult to ignore.
Some cats may manipulate their owners into feeding them with a unique meow -- a purr mixed with a high-pitched cry (Image: stock.xchng).
"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. "Solicitation purring is probably more acceptable to humans than overt meowing, which is likely to get cats ejected from the bedroom." They know us: Previous research has shown similarities between cat cries and human infant cries. More>>
