Feline vocal communication

Chloé Tavernier; Sohail Ahmed; Katherine Albro Houpt; Seong Chan Yeon

doi:10.4142/jvs.2020.21.e18

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Tavernier, Ahmed, Houpt, and Yeon: Feline vocal communication

Review Behavior

J Vet Sci 2020;21(1):e18.

Published online: 4 January 2020

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4142/jvs.2020.21.e18

Feline vocal communication

Chloé Tavernier¹, Sohail Ahmed², Katherine Albro Houpt³, Seong Chan Yeon^2,^*

¹Université de Rennes 1, Master Ethology “Comportement Animal et Humain”, Rennes 35000, France

²Department of Veterinary Clinical Sciences and Research Institute for Veterinary Science, Seoul Wildlife Center, College of Veterinary Medicine, Seoul National University, Seoul 08826, Korea

³Animal Behavior Clinic, Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA

^*Corresponding author: Seong Chan Yeon Department of Veterinary Clinical Sciences and Research Institute for Veterinary Science, Seoul Wildlife Center, College of Veterinary Medicine, Seoul National University, 1 Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu, Seoul 08826, Korea. E-mail: scyeon1@snu.ac.kr

Received 1 July 2019 Revised 6 December 2019 Accepted 16 December 2019

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Cat vocalizes to communicate with another and express their internal states. The vocal repertoire of the cat is wide and up to 21 different vocalizations have been described in the literatures. But it is more than probable that the repertoire contains more types of vocalizations. An ethogram was created in this paper describing the actual known vocalisations of the domestic cat based on an auditory classification. However, the audiogram allows also a visual classification which can increase the accuracy of vocalization differentiation. The classification can be risky as it is sometimes unclear if different types of vocalizations are produced in different environments or if a unique type of vocalization is used with variation in the acoustic parameters. As an example, isolation calls produced by kittens differ depending on the context. The environment has an important impact on the vocal behaviour and thus feral cats and pet cats vocalize differently. Pet cats are thus able to create an efficient communication with humans thanks to the flexibility of vocalisation behaviours. This review allowed us to create a simple model of the cat vocal repertory.

Keywords: Animal vocalization, cat, auditory perception

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Fig. 1.

Overview of the domestic cat vocalization. Domestic cats can produce different types of vocalization in different communication contexts. However, these vocalizations can be altered by the cat's genetics, thus cats have individual vocalizations which especially matter in the mother-kitten interaction. The vocalizations can also be modulated by the environment of the cat, thus the same vocalization can be use in different contexts like the purr of the mew.

Table 1.

Ethogram of the adult cat vocalization

Table 2.

Acoustic parameters of mew calls

Mean duration (ms)	Min Fo (kHz)	Max Fo (kHz)	Mean Fo (kHz)	No. of cats	Reference
0.11–3.1	–	–	400–1,200	12	[31]
F: 1,016; M: 989	F: 0.27; M: 0.24	F: 0.44; M: 0.35	F: 0.37; M: 0.30	17 (F: 8; M: 9)	[30]^*
0.5–1.0	–	–	700–800	–	[2]
0.54	221	1,185	698	3	[29]

F, female; M, male.

^* The mew data were produced by Felis s. silvestris.

Table 3.

Parameters of the ingressive and egressive phases of the purr vocalization

Parameters	Ingressive phase		Egressive phase
Mean relative sound pressure level (dB)	70.66–72.4	–	71.72–76.43	–
Mean duration of the phases (ms)	251–819	573 ± 72	484–756	576 ± 90
Max duration (ms) (sd)	–	740	–	700
Min duration (ms) (sd)	–	450	–	360
Mean No. of cycles per phase	13.41–21.28	13.19 ± 1.64	12.46–20.15	12.43 ± 1.21
Max No. of cycles per phase	–	15	–	15
Min No. of cycles per phase	–	10	–	10
MeanF0 (Hz)	23.00–26.09	23.24 ± 3.58	20.94–27.21	21.98 ± 3.36
MaxF0 (Hz)	–	28.8	–	30.5
MinF0 (Hz)	–	18.2	–	17.1
No. of cats	4	1	4	1
Reference	[27]	[16]	[27]	[16]

Data are shown as mean ± standard deviation or median (interquartile range).

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