Jax Pet Nanny At Your Service

This is an interesting study I thought I would share with all you cat lovers in Jacksonville.  It's titled "Cats Do Control Humans".  Remember, the Jax Pet Nanny not only is provides pet sitting for dogs in Jacksonville florida but I also pet sit for many cats in Jacksonville.  I can provide cat sitting services on short notice.  Contact me today! 

Enjoy the article.

Cats Do Control Humans, Study Finds

http://LiveScience.com

livescience Staff

Mon Jul 13, 12:50 pm ET

If you've ever wondered who's in control, you or your cat, a new study points to the obvious. It's your cat. Household cats exercise this control with a certain type of urgent-sounding, high-pitched meow, according to the findings.  This meow is actually a purr mixed with a high-pitched cry. Whilepeople usually think of cat purring as a sign of happiness, some catsmake this purr-cry sound when they want to be fed. The study showedthat humans find these mixed calls annoying and difficult to ignore. "The embedding of a cry within a call thatwe normally associate with contentment is quite a subtle means ofeliciting a response," said Karen McComb of the University of Sussex."Solicitation purring is probably more acceptable to humans than overtmeowing, which is likely to get cats ejected from the bedroom." They know us Previous research has shown similarities between cat cries and human infant cries.

McComb suggests that the purr-cry may subtly take advantage of humans'sensitivity to cries they associate with nurturing offspring. Also,including the cry within the purr could make the sound "less harmonicand thus more difficult to habituate to," she said.

McComb got the idea for the study from herexperience with her own cat, who would consistently wake her up in themornings with a very insistent purr. After speaking with other cat owners,she learned that some of their cats also made the same type of call. Asa scientist who studies vocal communication in mammals, she decided toinvestigate the manipulative meow.  Tough to test Setting up the experiments wasn't easy. While the felines used purr-cries around their familiar owners,they were not eager to make the same cries in front of strangers. SoMcComb and her team trained cat owners to record their pets' cries -capturing the sounds made by cats when they were seeking food and whenthey were not. In all, the team collected recordings from 10 differentcats.

The researchers then played the cries backfor 50 human participants, not all of whom owned cats. They found thathumans, even if they had never had a cat themselves, judged the purrsrecorded while cats were actively seeking food - the purrs with anembedded, high-pitched cry - as more urgent and less pleasant thanthose made in other contexts.

When the team re-synthesised the recordedpurrs to remove the embedded cry, leaving all else unchanged, the humansubjects' urgency ratings for those calls decreased significantly. McComb said she thinks this cry occurs at alow level in cats' normal purring, "but we think that cats learn todramatically exaggerate it when it proves effective in generating aresponse from humans." In fact, not all cats use this form of purringat all, she said, noting that it seems to most often develop in catsthat have a one-on-one relationship with their owners rather than thoseliving in large households, where their purrs might be overlooked. The results were published in the July 14 issue of the journal Current Biology.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20090713/sc_livescience/catsdocontrolhumansstudyfinds;_ylt=ApKmAdf5lrz1SPLv_A5yPJKCfNdF