Cats "Exploit" Humans By Purring

An anonymous reader notes a BBC report on research recently published in the journal Current Biology, indicating that cats manipulate humans by adding a baby-like cry to their purring. "Cat owners may have suspected as much, but it seems our feline friends have found a way to manipulate us humans. Researchers at the University of Sussex have discovered that cats use a 'soliciting purr' to overpower their owners and garner attention and food. Unlike regular purring, this sound incorporates a 'cry,' with a similar frequency to a human baby's. The team said cats have 'tapped into' a human bias — producing a sound that humans find very difficult to ignore."

Comments

Self domesticated

[msgmonkey]

Don't forget that cats self-domesticated so the the evolution of this kind of behaviour would have been baised from the begining.

Re:Huh???

[Nomaxxx]

I have never in my whole life experienced a purr that had ANY recognizable component of "baby cry" in it.

It's not said that it sounds like a baby cry but only that it's on the same frequency.

Re:Evolution or Intelligent Design?

[Daemonax]

Natural selection or artificial selection is what you should have titled that.

Intelligent design is a term used for a fairly specific type of religious sophistry.

Re:Definitely not evolution - adaptation, maybe

[AmiMoJo]

Cats are very unusual in evolutionary terms. For solitary animals, they have remarkably well developed social skills. The ability to make a wide variety of vocal sounds is usually associated with social development and mating habits too.

Clearly humans have not been a major factor in their evolution - we have not been domesticating them for nearly long enough. By chance they developed into cute, furry and agreeable little things that human beings enjoy having around. They are intelligent enough to manipulate us quite successfully and yet, despite being fully aware of what is happening we accept and even enjoy it. Being highly independent they have their own little lives which fascinate us.

Maybe it's just anthropomorphism, but it's certainly highly fortunate from the cat's point of view. Average life expectancy in the wild is a few years, domesticated it's 10+.