Of course, isn't language noise that gets results?
No one said cats are Shakespearean actors (though they ARE equally
dramatic =g=), but they do distinctly communicate.

Ah well!

Interesting article, anyway....
=g=

====
But what life is without danger, really? [Jill Fredston, arctic
adventure's] father, Arthur Fredston, a courtly Manhattan attorney, was
walking near the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, 2001.
Her mother, Elinor Fredston, was diagnosed with peritoneal cancer almost
six years ago.... So, compared with terrorism and cancer, what's an
occasional polar bear? --Michael Ryan

--------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Lorax Haven" 
Date: Thu, 29 May 2003 09:56:57 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Psychology dissects how of the meow

http://www.ajc.com/living/content/living/0503/29cattalk.html

Psychology dissects how of the meow

By BILL HENDRICK
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
        

Cat lovers like Linda Davis of Atlanta have long thought their pets
could talk. Now research shows they're right -- in a way.

Davis is convinced her cat CB does talk, sometimes in meowlike words.
She insists she's not crazy.

"If I hold up an egg, I'll say, 'Say egg,' and she'll get the guttural
'g' sound," says Davis, 51. "I don't see how people can think that cats
don't communicate with us. They don't meow just to make noise." Cornell
University researcher Michael Owren, co-author of a newly published
study on cat vocalization, says it's not surprising cat owners think
like Davis.

Owren is one of 2,000 psychologists gathered this week at the American
Psychological Society's annual convention that starts today and ends
Sunday at the Hyatt Regency downtown. Researchers will consider
hundreds of topics, ranging from what people look for in mates and
soulmates to the best ways to flaunt attractiveness to the opposite
sex.

Owren's work into "non-linguistic vocal communication" may be enough to
make you say "sufferin' succotash." He studies cats for clues about the
roots of human speech and says that after 10,000 years of living with
people, cats have evolved into con artists, learning what sounds get
results and using different meows to manipulate their owners.

"Cats have evolved after thousands of years of cohabitation with humans
to be able to influence the behavior of people by producing sounds that
draw our attention," Owren says. "It's not language. It's not like a
cat's meow is a word. But rather they are producing sounds that have an
auditory impact on humans."

Fred Salmons, a 55-year-old business consultant from Marietta,
considers himself perfectly rational. But he's also convinced that he
and his wife, Carol, know what their cat, Smokey, is saying when she
meows.

"We know the difference between her meow for petting and for food," he
says. "Petting is quiet and accompanied by purring." Smokey's plea for
food is "louder and more urgent than any other meow she makes."

Psychologist Stuart Vyse of Connecticut College, an expert on why
people can believe in things that seem weird, said feline owners may
well learn to understand their cats, but that they also "may be the
human imposing an interpretation on something that has no meaning or a
different meaning."

It's the acoustic properties of cat sounds and human reactions to them
that form the basis of how cats convey specific meanings to people,
says Owren. Similarly, our ancestors likely used crude laughs before
developing more sophisticated ways to convey feelings, like speech.

Researchers in Owren's lab compiled a sample of 100 different
vocalizations from 12 cats, and recordings were played for 26 people,
who rated each sound for pleasantness and appeal on a scale of 1 to 7.
The same 100 cat calls were played for 28 others who were asked to
indicate how urgent and demanding the sounds were. Owren and his lead
researcher, Nicholas Nicastro, say listeners responded fastest to the
most pleasant meows, just as primeval humans must have.

The meows rated as more urgent or less pleasant were longer, "with more
energy in the lower frequencies, along the lines of 'mee-O-O-O-O-W,' "
Nicastro says. More pleasant, less demanding ones "tended to be
shorter, with the energy spread evenly through the high and low
frequencies. These sounds started high and went low, like 'MEE-ow.' "

Listeners were correct 27 percent of the time in figuring out what the
cat calls meant, far better than the 20 percent that would have been
expected by mere chance, an impressive indication that felines are
pretty good communicators.

Owren's research didn't look at how cats communicate with other cats,
which is somewhat of a mystery, since they seldom meow to each other.
It's likely, he says, they learned to meow only to get what they wanted
from humans.

His study is published in the latest issue of the peer-reviewed Journal
of Comparative Psychology.
                 ---------------
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