Classification of domestic cat meows and human perception

Nicastro and Owren analyzed the acoustic structure of domestic cat meows recorded in different behavioural contexts and tested whether human listeners could classify them. They measured features such as duration, pitch and spectral shape across calls produced in situations like food solicitation, distress and agonistic encounters, finding acoustic differences among contexts. Human listeners could categorize meows by context at above-chance levels, especially with experience, though performance was modest, indicating that meows carry some context information but are not highly differentiated signals. The authors interpreted the meow as a flexible, somewhat graded call that cats direct largely at humans and that owners learn to interpret through familiarity. The study is a foundational acoustic analysis of the meow, a vocalization rare in adult cat-cat interaction but central to cat-human communication.