The ties that are created between a cat and its owner are very close, so much so that a study by the Université Paris Nanterre (France) has discovered that cats, in addition to being able to distinguish the voice of their owners, also know when they are talking to them , something that causes them to change their behavior.
The work was carried out by analyzing 16 cats that were placed in three different circumstances, one of them was given a recording in which the owner’s voice was alternately changed to that of a stranger, and in the other two it was the owner’s voice but in one it was addressed to the feline and in the other to another adult.
The results showed that in the first situation, 10 of the 16 cats reduced the intensity of their behavior when they heard three clips followed by a stranger’s voice calling their name. However, the behavior was completely the opposite when hearing the owner’s voice, the intensity was increased.
Cats recognize the voice of their owners and if they address them
Among these behaviors analyzed in the study published in the journal Animal Cognition, was the turning of the ears towards the loudspeakers, an increase in the movement of these felines around the test room or the dilation of the pupils when they recognized the sound generated by their owner. This could indicate that animals are capable of knowing what their owner’s voice is like and differentiating it from the rest.
Cats can tell when their owner is talking to them or someone else, but not when the person doing the talking is a stranger
In the second scenario, 10 cats reduced the intensity of their behavior when they listened to the recording in which their owner spoke to another adult, while the behavior intensified when the voice was directed at them. Finally, in the last arranged situation, no changes were observed in the animal’s behavior when a stranger spoke in a tone directed at an adult or a cat.
The conclusion reached by the researchers was that, indeed, cats can differentiate when their owner speaks to them or to another person, but the same does not happen when the person who does it is a stranger. This suggests that they are able to distinguish our tone, which clearly changes when we address a pet or, for example, a baby.
Although these findings provide new insights into cat-human relationships, the authors caution that their study sample is very small, and they believe these results should be verified and further investigated in larger investigations.
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