In addition, participants had to listen to six cat meows recorded in three different contexts and specify the context in which they were emitted and their emotional valence. Two hundred twenty-five adult participants were asked to complete an online questionnaire designed to assess their knowledge of cats and to evaluate their empathy toward animals (Animal Empathy Scale). Finally, some insights on which acoustic features are relevant for the main investigation are provided as a serendipitous result. A second aim was to evaluate whether the level of human empathy toward animals and cats and the participant’s gender would positively influence the recognition of cat vocalizations. The aim of the current study was to investigate to what extent adult humans recognize cat vocalizations, namely meows, emitted in three different contexts: waiting for food, isolation, and brushing. Only a limited number of studies have considered what people understand of cats’ human-directed vocal signals during daily cat–owner interactions. Overall, we found that, although meowing is mainly a human-directed vocalization and should represent a useful tool for cats to communicate emotional states to their owners, humans are not good at extracting precise information from cats’ vocalizations and show a limited capacity of discrimination based mainly on their experience with cats and influenced by gender and empathy toward them.Īlthough the domestic cat ( Felis catus) is probably the most widespread companion animal in the world and interacts in a complex and multifaceted way with humans, the human–cat relationship and reciprocal communication have received far less attention compared, for example, to the human–dog relationship. In addition, they listened to cat meows recorded in different situations and tried to identify the context in which they were emitted and their emotional valence. Participants were asked to complete an online questionnaire designed to assess their knowledge of cats and to evaluate their empathy toward animals. We also assessed whether participants’ gender and level of empathy toward animals in general, and toward cats in particular, positively affect the recognition of cat meows. This work investigates adult humans’ capacity to recognize meows emitted by cats during waiting for food, isolation, and brushing. Meows are the most common human-directed vocalizations and are used in different everyday contexts to convey emotional states. Cat–human communication is a core aspect of cat–human relationships and has an impact on domestic cats’ welfare.
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