In our final article covering the Ig Nobel Prizes, we arrive at the biology category.
For the pet owners out there who believe they have a special bond with their furry companions, this one is for you…
A Quick Reminder – What are the Ig-Nobel Prizes?
If you have read any of our previous articles about the Ig-Nobel Prizes – you can skip this section! If, however, you have never heard of this award ceremony then keep reading for a quick introduction.
The Ig Nobel Prizes were set up to honour those people and projects that make people laugh, then think. The prizes are handed out for the weird, the imaginative, the unusual – anything that can spur people’s interest in science, medicine, or technology.
Usually, the ceremony is held every September as a gala-type event in Harvard University’s Sanders Theatre. Unfortunately, in a Covid blighted world this was not possible, so the entire event was streamed online.
It is possible to watch the full event for free by clicking here. Previous ceremonies have had the prizes presented to recipients by Nobel Laureates in front of the massed 1100 spectators. Thousands more watch along online.
The Biology Prize
The team that won the biology prize is from Sweden (Susanne Schötz, Robert Eklund, and Joost van de Weijer) and completed research into and analysing variations in purring, chirping, chattering, trilling, tweedling, murmuring, meowing, moaning, squeaking, hissing, yowling, howling, growling, and other modes of cat–human communication.
The winners were handed their prize at the time stamp of 11:50 on the online ceremony for their impressive collection of research. Although only one paper is looked at in this article, the award recognises several papers.
The Biology Prize – Background
It is understood from the introduction of the paper (with references to others) that there has long been anecdotal evidence of pets imitating speech in interactions with humans. It is likely that this is a learned skill to elicit certain responses for rewards in the form of food.
Due to the position of their larynx, non-human mammals are able to articulate a limited number of the vowel and consonant sounds in the human language. However, many animals are able to produce extensive vocal variation in duration, F0, and sound pressure level – and are thus able to adopt prosodic patterns mimicking those used in human speech.
In recent years there has been an increase in studies into mammal vocalisation yet phonetic studies into pet vocalisations remain scarce. Very little is known about the prosodic aspects of pet vocalisation during pet and human communication.
Until now. This award-winning study seeks to shed some light on human-pet communication issues by examining the human perception of different intonational patterns in one of the most common pets world-wide, the cat.
Cats were domesticated around 10,000 years ago and the number domesticated world-wide has since grown to 600 million individuals. Seen as social animals, their interaction with their human caretakers develop over a long period of time living together to has resulted in cross-species communication through vocal and visual signals.
Although it is still unclear how cats combine different sounds and vary intonation, duration, and intensity, vocalisations are generally divided into three major categories;
- Sounds produced with the mouth closed (murmurs) such as the purr, the trill, and the chirrup
- Sounds produce with the mouth opening and gradually closing, comprising a large variety of meows with similar vowel patterns
- Sounds produced with the mouth held tensely open in the same position. These sounds often uttered during aggressive situations, including growls, yowls, snarls, hisses, spits, and shrieks
Cats have been observed in learning to produce different meows for different purposes. For example, to begin feeding, gain access to closed-off locations, or for other resources provided by caretakers. This is not to say there is a universal cat-human language, but rather that these sounds are arbitrary, learned, attention-seeking sounds.
A Brief Explanation of the Methodology
For the purpose of this article the methodology of this research paper has been simplified with parts omitted. If you would like to read the full paper (which we recommend you do), you can find a link here: https://portal.research.lu.se/en/publications/a-study-of-human-perception-of-intonation-in-domestic-cat-meows
This experiment involved three young domesticated cats; Rocky, Donna, and Turbo (R, D, and T – all three-year old siblings from the same litter). These cates were then recorded (video camera and shotgun microphone) in two different contexts, either in a familiar environment, or in an unfamiliar environment. Familiar environments consisted of waiting in their home kitchen to be fed, and the unfamiliar environment as in the waiting room or in a car outside of a veterinary clinic.
Six meows from each context produced by D and T were selected as material based on the overall quality of the recording and on judgements of the owner (who happens to be one of the authors) of how representative the vocalisations were for each context. Auditive analysis of the material by one of the authors showed that the food-related meows tended to have rising tonal patterns, while meows from veterinary location had slightly more arched or falling intonation.
The subsequent experiment was designed as a multiple forced choice identification test. A group of 30 volunteers (15 male and 15 female) with average age of 44 years were the participants, with 21 reported being familiar with cats.
Oral and written instructions were given before the experiment in which the task of classifying each meow as belonging to either food context or to vet context by clicking on the appropriate box on a computer screen was outlined. The experiment was ran on a MacBook Pro in a quiet room for audio clarity, with each of the twelve meow recordings presented three times in a randomised order. Following on directly after the test, all participants were asked to make a single judgement of the degree of certainty of their responses on a 5-point scale.
The Results
For the purpose of this article the findings of the research paper have been simplified, with parts omitted. If you would like to read the full paper (which we recommend you do), you can find a link here: https://portal.research.lu.se/en/publications/a-study-of-human-perception-of-intonation-in-domestic-cat-meows
Figure 1 – The time normalised F0 contours of the food and vet-related meows. The two contours of the stimuli that received highest proportion of correct classifications for each context in the perception experiment are represented in black.
The results showed that listeners were able to correctly identify domestic cat meows from two different contexts significantly better than chance. Further to this, experienced listeners were better judges of cat communication than inexperienced ones.
There was a tendency for participants to judge meows with rising intonations as food related and those with falling intonation as vet related communication. Acoustic analysis revealed that the food-related meows tended to have rising F0 contours often in combination with a high F0 range. The vet related meows often held slightly falling F0 patterns and were often accompanied by a low F0 range.
It is entirely possible that the listeners were influenced by these differences in F0 range and this is what they interpreted as expressions of different emotions. Essentially, classifying food related stimuli as happy with high F0 range, and vet related stimuli as sad with low F0 range.
Interestingly, a majority of the participants reported that some meows were easy to judge, while some were incredibly difficult. Short meows were often found as the most difficult to classify. Some listeners even reported that they recognised some of the meows as being similar to those of their own cats – suggesting that different cats produce similar vocalisations in the contexts used in this study.
Several participants made the comment that they quickly adopted a strategy for classification which they then implemented throughout the rest of the experiment even though they were uncertain with the overall success of this strategy.
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