Cats can tell when owners are speaking to them by their tone of voice, study suggests

Cats are able to tell when their owner is talking directly to them by their tone of voice, new research suggests.

Domesticated felines were found to change their behaviour upon hearing their owner’s voice talking in a tone directed to them – but not when hearing a stranger speak or their owner talking to another person.

The small study of 16 cats adds to evidence that cats may form strong bonds with their owner, and the authors suggest that their findings bring a new dimension to cat-human relationships – with cat communication potentially relying on experience of their owner’s voice.

Previous research has shown that humans alter their tone of voice when directing their speech to cats, but less is understood about how felines react to this.

In their study, published in the journal Animal Cognition on Tuesday, Dr Charlotte de Mouzon and colleagues from Paris Nanterre University investigated how cats reacted to pre-recorded phrases spoken by both their owner and a stranger, using a mixture of tones either directed at cats or humans.

The scientists then rated the intensity of the cats’ reactions to the audio, based on visible behaviours such as resting, moving their ears and tails, and their pupils dilating.

They explored three scenarios, comparing the cats’ reactions to: the voice of their owner and that of a stranger; their owner using cat-directed and human-directed tones of voice; and a stranger doing the same.

In the first scenario, the intensity of the behaviour of 10 out of the 16 cats was found to decrease when reacting to the sound of a stranger calling them by their name.

By contrast, their behaviour increased significantly in intensity again upon hearing their owner doing so, with some turning their ears towards the speakers, increasing their movement around the room and experiencing dilated pupils.

The sudden rebound in the cats’ behaviour led the scientists to believe that the pets were able to discriminate between the two voices.

In the second scenario, 10 cats – eight of whom were among those to react during the first – decreased their behaviour when their owner used a tone directed at other humans.

But the behaviours then signficantly increased when they heard the human talking in a tone of voice typically directed to them.

The study found that the cats did not react any differently when the stranger altered their tone of voice in the same way.

The authors concluded that one-to-one relationships are important for cats and humans to form strong bonds.

However, they said that the small sample size of the study means it may not be wholly representative of all cat behaviour, and suggested that future research could investigate whether their findings can be replicated in more socialised cats who are used to interacting with strangers.

The small sample size used in this study may not represent all cat behaviour but the authors propose that future research could investigate if their findings can be replicated in more socialised cats that are used to interacting with strangers.

The authors suggest that their findings bring a new dimension to cat-human relationships, with cat communication potentially relying on experience of the speaker’s voice. They conclude that one-to-one relationships are important for cats and humans to form strong bonds.