Manipulation - Lemmy.World

cats absolutely meow to other cats

From wikipedia

Adult cats rarely meow to each other. Thus, an adult cat meowing to human beings is generally considered a post-domestication extension of meowing by kittens: a call for attention.

Meow - Wikipedia

Cats are not domesticated though.

this is a stupid take especially considering that “tame” usually literally just means domesticated

  • Not or no longer wild; domesticated
  • adjective: 1. (of an animal) not dangerous or frightened of people; domesticated.

    verb: domesticate (an animal).

    My cats meow at each other sometimes, especially when surprised or trying to pick a fight, but it’s very different than how they meow at me. And they seem to favor non verbal cues with each other as well.
    They don’t, they chatter and chirp. But not full meows.
    I believed the tweet for a second, but then I remembered all the times I have woken in middle of the night with the gangs of cats outside my street just meowing to each other
    Those cats on the street are not meowing, they are yowling. That’s a holler to intimidate or to fight, over a territory or hot ladies. That’s not a meow for a human to fill the food bowl or give scritches or something else tame and domestic.

    it’s honestly ever so slightly worrying that people would think yowling and meowing are the same thing, they can be sorta similar sure but yowls literally sound like a human voice and are slightly unnerving because of it.

    It’s like a parent thinking a baby’s laughter and screaming are the same thing, that’s… not a good sign…

    Maybe “meow” is cat language for “filthy peasant”, so they’re using it to insult each other and to address us.
    This is the only explanation that makes sense.
    /glass of water falls off the table
    Domesticated cats meow much more than wild ones do, since they’ve learned to do it for us. Cat mothers chirp to their kittens. So while yes, they do, the tweet is right; cats meow to get our attention, and they meow at about the same frequency as babies.

    The incorrect part about the tweet is that they do it to mimic human infants. They do not. They learned that humans love a little meow meow and it gets them attention, it’s that it’s similar to babies

    My friend had a cat whose meow sounded like an elderly pack-a-day smoker.

    Yeah, this implies that every single cat has heard a baby crying. Clearly this is not the case.
    Convergent evolution. Their cries naturally mimic the frequencies of human babies. It’s not deliberate, but rather there happened to be a creature that lived around humans that worked this way, and now it’s a survival trait.
    Not generally in the wild. Domesticated cats are much more vocal.