This is from the Summer 2002 newsletter of the Acoustical Society of America. Link to the PDF is below.
A front-page story in the June 10 edition of the Pittsburgh Post-
Gazette picks up on the acoustics of a cats meow, as presented in
paper 3aABb2 by Nicholas Nicastro at the Pittsburgh ASA meeting.
Cats do communicate with people, but that doesnt mean they
communicate like people. Nicastro hypothesizes that cats, which
were domesticated more than 5000 years ago, have learned to use
and shape their meows in ways that appeal to, or at least engage,
humans. The meow is unusual in that cats rarely use it with each
other; hissing, spitting, and purring seem to suffice for their peers.
Cats seem to reserve their meows largely for humans and over the
course of more than 5000 years of domestication have learned to
tailor their meows for the human ear. The shorter the meows, the
more pleasant and less urgent they seemed to humans. The longer
meows seemed more urgent and less pleasant.
Source:
http://asa.aip.org/vol12no3.pdf
Gazette picks up on the acoustics of a cats meow, as presented in
paper 3aABb2 by Nicholas Nicastro at the Pittsburgh ASA meeting.
Cats do communicate with people, but that doesnt mean they
communicate like people. Nicastro hypothesizes that cats, which
were domesticated more than 5000 years ago, have learned to use
and shape their meows in ways that appeal to, or at least engage,
humans. The meow is unusual in that cats rarely use it with each
other; hissing, spitting, and purring seem to suffice for their peers.
Cats seem to reserve their meows largely for humans and over the
course of more than 5000 years of domestication have learned to
tailor their meows for the human ear. The shorter the meows, the
more pleasant and less urgent they seemed to humans. The longer
meows seemed more urgent and less pleasant.
Source:
http://asa.aip.org/vol12no3.pdf
