Cats are able to pick up on emotional cues in human speech, but the sound of a voice alone is not enough for them to accurately determine what emotions a person is experiencing. This conclusion was reached by specialists who studied how domestic cats react to recordings of human voices.

Study Process

The research was conducted at Aldo Moro University in Bari, Italy. Twenty cats of various breeds and ages participated in the experiment. The animals were played recordings of unfamiliar people expressing four emotions—joy, fear, anger, and sadness—as well as neutral speech. During the experiment, researchers observed the cats’ behavioral responses: the position of their ears and tails, the direction of their gaze, head movements, vocalizations, and attempts to approach or move away from the sound source. All these reactions were combined into a general indicator of emotional arousal.

Results

The analysis showed that emotionally charged voices attracted the cats’ attention more than neutral speech. When listening to such intonations, the animals were more likely to turn toward the speaker, listen more attentively, and display alertness.

However, there were almost no differences in the cats’ reactions to specific emotions (joy, fear, anger, sadness). The cats responded to all emotional intonations in roughly the same way and did not demonstrate the ability to reliably distinguish between specific emotions based solely on voice.

Conclusions

The data obtained do not indicate a complete lack of understanding of human emotional states in cats. However, for accurate recognition of mood, cats likely require not only acoustic but also visual information. In everyday life, cats simultaneously perceive facial expressions, posture, movements, gaze direction, and other signals, which together help them understand human intentions. In the experiment, all visual cues were excluded, so the animals had to rely only on the voice.

It is also noted that the study used recordings of unfamiliar voices. It is possible that cats’ reactions to the emotional intonations of their owners would be different, which researchers plan to investigate in future studies.

Context

Previous research has shown that cats can recognize their owner’s voice, distinguish their own name, and respond to the direction of a human’s gaze. However, the question of how they perceive emotions remained open. The new study demonstrated that emotional coloring in speech alone increases cats’ attention, but does not allow them to reliably determine a person’s specific emotional state.

One reason for this, according to experts, may be the particularities of domestication: unlike dogs, which have adapted more closely to living with humans, cats have retained a greater degree of independence. Therefore, it may be less important for them to instantly recognize human emotions based solely on voice.