As well as recording pet cats, Nicastro went to
a zoo in Pretoria, South Africa to record the
calls of the wild desert cats from which modern
domestic cats evolved. These are still being analyzed
and have not been tested on humans, but his
preliminary findings reveal very different vocalizations.
The wild cats have cries which are harsher and
less musical-sounding than domestic cats or, as
other people have commented, "like cats on
steroids".
Strangely, it does not appear to have occurred
to Nicastro to record the cries of feral cats -
cats which are domestic cats in all but their
habits. If feral cats have the same range of meows
as their fully domestic counterparts then cat
language probably evolved for inter-cat situations
and is merely modified for the cat-human
situation.
My own experience with rescue cats leads me to
conclude that Nicastro would do well to analyze
inter-cat communication (particularly that between
mother and kitten) for its pleasantness and
urgency - and compare their use of body language
in cat/cat and cat/human situations - before
jumping to any co-evolutionary conclusions!
Good
Litter Box Manners
Cats are extraordinarily fastidious creatures. Outdoors they tend to
urinate and defecate in relatively open and previously unused areas. More...
