The Meow Talk app is available on iOS and Android. — AFP Relaxnews
What if you could understand your cat’s meowing? It is often difficult to decipher the behaviour of our furry friends, and even more so their noises. But there’s an app for that! You may be shaking your head in disbelief but Meow Talk is designed to help pet parents decipher the mystery sounds.
Cat got your tongue? Your pet will no longer be able to keep secrets from you – maybe. This application claims to allow you to translate the meows of your little ball of fur.
Essentially, the Meow Talk app promises to identify up to 11 types of meows. Whether they are angry, happy, looking for attention or in pain, our four-legged friends use a very specific vocabulary to call out to their human guardian (or humble servant).
For Javier Sanchez, one of the founders of the app and former engineer at Amazon who participated in the development of the virtual assistant Alexa, the Meow Talk application enables us to better identify the moods and states of mind of our cats. A promise that relies heavily on machine learning.
Users are invited to fill in and record their pets’ meows to improve the “translation”, in specific contexts. According to the app’s researchers, 90% of the translations turn out to be accurate, but of course it’s hard to be 100% sure. Some cat behaviorists remain sceptical.
Although the application has already been downloaded more than five million times on Android, users don’t seem to be completely convinced either – in particular they criticise the pricing of the app. Meow Talk is free to download and then costs about US$3 (RM13) a month to use. – AFP Relaxnews
