IF YOU'VE ever watched your cat stare intensely out the window at a bird, making that peculiar "ek-ek-ek" chattering sound with its jaw vibrating like a tiny jackhammer, you have probably wondered what on earth is going through its furry little head.
Some people think it's frustration at not being able to catch the bird, others reckon it's excitement, while a few have suggested something far more intriguing: that cats are actually mimicking their prey to lure them closer.
Do cats really mimic the sounds of their prey?
Verdict:
TRUE (in general at least)
While the jury is still out on why domestic cats chatter, their wild cousins absolutely do use vocal mimicry as a hunting strategy, and the documented cases are genuinely fascinating.
The undisputed champion of feline vocal trickery is the margay, a small spotted wildcat that lives in the forests of Central and South America. Roughly the size of a domestic cat but with a longer tail and larger eyes, the margay spends most of its life in the trees, where it hunts birds, small mammals and primates with extraordinary agility.
In 2005, researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the Federal University of Amazonas were conducting field observations in the Reserva Florestal Adolpho Ducke in Brazil when they witnessed something unprecedented.
A group of eight pied tamarin monkeys had settled down to feed at a fig tree, with one acting as a sentinel to watch for predators. The researchers then heard the unmistakable calls of baby tamarins, but they were puzzled because the sounds were not coming from any young monkeys in the group.
The source of the calls was a margay, hidden from view, deliberately imitating the distress cries of infant tamarins. The sentinel monkey, confused by the sounds, climbed up and down the tree trying to locate the source, making its own calls to alert the group that something was happening.
Four other tamarins descended from their feeding spots to investigate what they believed was a baby in distress. After about 10 minutes, the margay emerged from the foliage, walking down the trunk of a tree in a squirrel-like fashion before jumping down and moving towards the monkeys.
At that moment, the sentinel realised the deception and screamed an alarm, sending the entire group fleeing to safety.
Fabio Rohe, a WCS researcher who witnessed the event, described the observation as demonstrating "psychological cunning" that merited further study.
The research, published in the June 2009 issue of Neotropical Primates, represented the first scientifically documented case of a wild cat in the Americas using vocal mimicry to hunt prey.
Rohe later admitted that while the margay's imitation was admittedly a "poor imitation" of a baby tamarin, it was close enough to draw the attention of adult monkeys and lure them within striking range.
The researchers interviewed indigenous people living in the central Amazon, who reported that other large cat species, including jaguars, cougars and pumas, also employ vocal mimicry to trick their prey.
These cats are said to imitate the sounds of agoutis (large rodents) and tinamou birds to lure them closer. Whilst these accounts remain anecdotal and have not yet been scientifically documented, Dr Avecita Chicchon, director of the WCS Latin America Programme, noted that the margay observation "further proves the reliability of information obtained from Amazonian inhabitants" and suggested that "accounts of jaguars and pumas using the same vocal mimicry to attract prey also deserve investigation".
Researchers believe that mother margays likely pass this vocal mimicry technique down to their offspring through observation and practice, making it a learned cultural behaviour rather than purely instinctive.
Many of South America's prey species make sharp, distinctive sounds that may fall within the potential vocal repertoires of cats, giving them ample opportunities to develop mimicry skills.
So what about domestic cats? Do they possess this same talent for aural deception?
The chattering sound that domestic cats make when watching prey, officially called "chirps" or "chattering", occurs when a cat spots prey it cannot reach, such as birds outside a window.
The behaviour involves rapid jaw movements accompanied by that distinctive staccato vocalisation, often while the cat's body remains still except for the tip of its tail, which vibrates with excitement.
Most researchers believe that chattering in domestic cats is purely instinctive. Some suggest it represents hunting frustration or an involuntary motor pattern related to the killing bite that cats deliver to the neck of prey.
Others think it might be a manifestation of excitement overload, caused by a rush of adrenaline and neurotransmitters like dopamine when the hunting instinct is triggered.
Karen McComb, a behavioural ecologist at the University of Sussex, suggests the chatter may be how cats control their excitement when spotting potential prey.
However, here is where the story becomes more compelling. We know that domestic cats are capable of sophisticated vocal mimicry when it serves their purposes. Research by McComb and her colleagues, published in Current Biology in 2009, demonstrated that cats modify their purrs and meows to the same frequency as human baby cries when they want food or attention.
The study recorded sounds from 10 cats in different contexts, some while actively soliciting food and others in relaxed, non-soliciting situations. When played for human listeners, the "solicitation purrs" were consistently rated as more urgent and less pleasant than normal purrs.
This is not random or accidental. Cats have worked out, through thousands of years of living alongside humans, that "sounding" like a human baby gets results.
They have essentially hacked our parental instincts to manipulate us into feeding them. This reinforces the argument that domestic cats possess both the physical capability and the cognitive sophistication required for vocal mimicry.
Now consider this crucial piece of evidence: the African wildcat, the direct ancestor of all domestic cats, also chatters when it sees prey. This behaviour is not something domestic cats invented; it is ancient, passed down through evolutionary lineage.
If chattering originally functioned as prey mimicry in ancestral wild cats, it is entirely possible that domestic cats have retained the behaviour but lost its practical hunting application over thousands of years of domestication.
They no longer need to hunt for survival, so the mimicry function has atrophied whilst the motor pattern remains. However, they have perhaps recovered the skill through a different avenue entirely by learning to imitate human babies instead of birds.
In a sense, they have replaced one form of prey mimicry with another that is far more useful in their current environment.
If vocal mimicry through chattering is indeed a basal trait in the cat family, meaning it was present in their common ancestor, it could stretch back an astonishingly long way in evolutionary history.
We are potentially talking about Pseudaelurus, the prehistoric cat that lived roughly 20 million years ago and is considered the ancestor of all modern cats, both big and small. That would make vocal mimicry one of the defining characteristics that has helped cats become such devastatingly successful predators throughout their evolutionary history.
But here is the frustrating part: nobody has actually studied whether or not domestic cat chattering functions as prey mimicry. The research simply does not exist.
This represents a genuinely brilliant PhD thesis opportunity for any budding zoologists or evolutionary biologists with too much time, several cats, and a very understanding supervisor.
So the next time your cat makes that weird chattering sound at a bird outside the window, consider the possibility that you are witnessing an ancient hunting technique passed down through millions of years of feline evolution.
Your adorable house cat, who cannot figure out how glass works, might be instinctively attempting to lure that bird closer using the same vocal tricks its prehistoric ancestors perfected when sabre-toothed cats still roamed the earth.
Then again, it might just be frustrated that dinner is on the other side of an invisible barrier. Until someone does the actual research, we are left with tantalising hints and circumstantial evidence. Cats remain mysterious creatures, and perhaps that is part of their enduring charm.
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