Cats are known for a wide range of sounds they use to communicate with people and other animals. The familiar meow, usually aimed at people, is a call for attention or a request for food. Hissing or growling at other animals signals stress and hostility. But what about the soft chirping sounds cats sometimes make while stalking prey? “It’s quite difficult to say exactly what’s happening, but it doesn’t seem to be communication with us or other animals,” said Dr. Mikel Maria Delgado of the American Association of Cat Behavior Consultants in an interview with Live Science. The independence of cats makes them hard to study in lab settings. Still, pet owners and researchers have a few theories that might explain this adorable chatter.
What are the possible explanations? Dr. Delgado says one hypothesis links the behavior to frustration. A cat sees its prey but is separated by a barrier. Just as humans might grunt or huff when annoyed, cats may express similar emotions through these peculiar vocalizations. Those emotions aren’t necessarily negative; the expert says it could simply be excitement. There’s no scientific evidence to support this theory, and designing an experiment to test it is complex. First, researchers must pin down the circumstances in which cats chatter. But demonstrating a cat’s emotional response is even trickier. Researchers may need to look at physiological indicators of stress, such as stress hormones.
Another idea is that cats open their mouths to boost their sense of smell. “By opening and closing their mouths, they might be trying to draw air into the area where their vomeronasal organ, or Jacobson’s organ, is located,” suggested Jonathan Losos, an evolutionary biologist at Washington University. This sensory organ on the roof of the mouth acts like a second nose, letting cats detect scents their regular noses might miss. By directing airflow to this organ, chirping may help cats gather more sensory information about their surroundings. Testing this hypothesis experimentally is also challenging.
The next possible explanation has a somewhat stronger scientific basis: mimicry. “Some researchers have observed that the margay (Leopardus wiedii), a small spotted wild cat from South and Central America, chirped while trying to hunt a group of small monkeys,” Losos said. Researchers suggested the margay’s chirps resembled the calls made by those monkeys.
The chirping also resembles the calls of small birds — common prey for domestic cats, which might use similar sounds while hunting. “Most cats are under-researched, and we don’t know much about them, just as we don’t know much about their ancestor, the North African wildcat,” Losos said. The key to understanding domestic cats may lie in a deeper study of wild cats. We need to identify which traits domestic cats inherited from their ancestors.
As Dr. Delgado points out, the mystery of cat chirping is unresolved for now. Pet owners could offer animal behaviorists useful observations that might help unravel it.
