Lions and tigers and cheetahs, oh my! A new study reveals that big cats aren’t as aloof as we might think.
Big cats can not only recognize familiar human voices but can distinguish them from strangers’ voices, Knewz.com has learned.
New research from Oakland University in Michigan reveals that lions, tigers and cheetahs are not the socially aloof creatures that we have come to believe. A team led by the university’s Professor Jennifer Vonk, studied 25 big cats of different species.
To determine whether they could in fact recognize familiar human voices, the team set up a wireless speaker outside the zoo’s enclosure and then played both familiar and unfamiliar voices, including those of their handlers, zoo workers and complete strangers.
In their paper titled “Catcalls: exotic cats discriminate the voices of familiar caregivers,” published on Thursday, February 15, in PeerJ Life & Environment, the researchers evaluated the big cats’ responses.
“Notably, all speakers spoke a familiar phrase,” they wrote, “but the cats responded with greater speed, more intensity and for longer durations only when this familiar phrase was spoken by familiar voices.” They also noted that the cats responded, “more quickly and with greater intensity (e.g., full versus partial head turn, both ears moved versus one ear twitching) to the most familiar voice in both studies.”
And unlike studies with domestic cats that have proven they respond to their names (when they feel like it), the big cats studied responded to familiar voices even without their names being called.
“Use of the cats’ name and rearing history did not significantly impact responding,” the researchers wrote.
The big takeaway from the study, according to the researchers, is that the ability to recognize specific humans is not dependent on domestication or being raised by humans. Rather, it’s dependent on socialization and close human contact.
“We anticipated that human rearing and use of the cats’ names would result in greater attention to the voices, as measured by the latency, intensity, and duration of responses regardless of subject sex and subfamily,” they wrote. However, the experiments revealed that was not the case.
The findings also challenge the myth that cats are more socially inept and don’t have the same cognitive abilities as more outgoing species such as dogs.
“This study adds to the growing body of work challenging stereotypes about cats as aloof creatures,” said Vonk. “It underscores the importance of recognizing the cognitive abilities of all species, even those traditionally considered less social.”
Buoyed by the results of the experiments with big cats, the researchers are conducting similar tests on other species including snakes and owls, to understand the cognitive abilities of different species.
