Rundown 2 — Cat purrs vs meows (purr as “identity signature”)

51:59number one, we'll be quicker for the renders the stories. Uh story number two uh that we have here this is out of the universita daglast studi de napoli frico I in Napoli Italy and the universities in Berlin in a paper in scientific reports this is about feline behavior a new study has shown that a cat's purr reveals much more about its individual identity than a meow cat's meow >> yeah so a meow is different from a purr is the point Okay. >> Um, you know, cats were domesticated probably like 10,000 years ago in the Middle East. And what they found using 27 different cats

52:41and the vocalizations of all these different cats is that cats do not meow to each other. The meow of the cat has specifically evolved to interact with their humans. >> Oh wow. >> Okay, that's the point of the story. The purr is actually something that is like very unique to a cat. So, one cat's purr is going to be just a foundationally different sound signature than another cat's purr. But the meows have a very high variance. And the meows are basically used to interact with human beings. >> Cats only meow at each other when they're like in a fight [laughter] effectively. Otherwise, they're like communicating like, "Hey, this is me

53:21using a purr." Yeah. >> And what they did was they also um compared the vocalization of these 27 domesticated cats with the cats in the wild. Okay. >> Again, that's what they found. The meows are more variable, but the pers are actually much more related to these wild cats. So, the purr has kind of been around since domestication and before domestication around 10,000 years ago in the Middle East, but the meow has actively evolved >> to communicate with human beings. Like, I need more food. I want to go outside. I hate you. >> I don't know what cats are like, but I think that's what's going on in their head. >> So, we've identified that a cat's purr is like their fingerprint. the idea that

54:02every individual's fingerprint is different, >> but the meow is the way for them to >> uh interface with the meat suits that are human beings. >> Yes. >> Uh that they get to boss around uh as they like to. >> Uh another follow-up to our lion roar