Yeon Seong C, Kim Young K, Park Se J, Lee Scott S, Lee Seung Y, Suh Euy H, Houpt Katherine A, Chang Hong H, Lee Hee C, Yang Byung G, Lee Hyo J
Laboratory of Veterinary Surgery and Behavior, College of Veterinary Medicine, Gyeongsang National University, Jinju 660-701, Republic of Korea.
Behav Processes. 2011 Jun;87(2):183-9. doi: 10.1016/j.beproc.2011.03.003. Epub 2011 Apr 1.
To investigate how socialization can affect the types and characteristics of vocalization produced by cats, feral cats (n=25) and house cats (n=13) were used as subjects, allowing a comparison between cats socialized to people and non-socialized cats. To record vocalization and assess the cats' responses to behavioural stimuli, five test situations were used: approach by a familiar caretaker, by a threatening stranger, by a large doll, by a stranger with a dog and by a stranger with a cat. Feral cats showed extremely aggressive and defensive behaviour in most test situations, and produced higher call rates than those of house cats in the test situations, which could be attributed to less socialization to other animals and to more sensitivity to fearful situations. Differences were observed in the acoustic parameters of feral cats in comparison to those of house cats. The feral cat produced significantly higher frequency in fundamental frequency, peak frequency, 1st quartile frequency, 3rd quartile frequency of growls and hisses in agonistic test situations. In contrast to the growls and hisses, in meow, all acoustic parameters like fundamental frequency, first formant, peak frequency, 1st quartile frequency, and 3rd quartile frequency of house cats were of significantly higher frequency than those of feral cats. Also, house cats produced calls of significantly shorter in duration than feral cats in agonistic test situations. These results support the conclusion that a lack of socialization may affect usage of types of vocalizations, and the vocal characteristics, so that the proper socialization of cat may be essential to be a suitable companion house cat.
为了研究社会化如何影响猫发出的叫声的类型和特征，以野猫（n = 25）和家猫（n = 13）为研究对象，从而对与人类有社交互动的猫和没有社交互动的猫进行比较。为了记录猫的叫声并评估它们对行为刺激的反应，设置了五种测试情境：熟悉的饲养员靠近、威胁性陌生人靠近、大型玩偶靠近、带着狗的陌生人靠近以及带着猫的陌生人靠近。在大多数测试情境中，野猫表现出极强的攻击性和防御性，并且在测试情境中发出叫声的频率高于家猫，这可能归因于它们对其他动物的社交互动较少以及对恐惧情境更为敏感。与家猫相比，观察到野猫在声学参数上存在差异。在对抗性测试情境中，野猫发出的咆哮和嘶嘶声的基频、峰值频率、第一四分位数频率、第三四分位数频率显著更高。与咆哮和嘶嘶声相反，在喵喵叫方面，家猫的所有声学参数，如基频、第一共振峰、峰值频率、第一四分位数频率和第三四分位数频率，都比野猫的频率显著更高。此外，在对抗性测试情境中，家猫发出叫声的持续时间明显短于野猫。这些结果支持了这样的结论：缺乏社交互动可能会影响叫声类型的使用以及叫声特征，因此，对猫进行适当的社会化对于使其成为合适的家养伴侣猫可能至关重要。
