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The story
A study published in an academic journal has found that when cats meow at people, it’s essentially a demand signal meaning “Hey, human, do something about this” — and an article covering the study on the curation site Karapaia sparked a lively discussion on 5ch’s News Speed+ board. Cats apparently almost never meow at each other; meowing seems to be a communication method reserved exclusively for humans. In the thread, posters rattled off specific examples of demands like “clean the litter box,” “feed me,” and “pay attention to me,” and the discussion also took off comparing cats to dogs — another animal domesticated by humans — and debating why dogs turned out so obedient by contrast.
The reason cats meow at humans: it’s a signal meaning “Hey, human, do something about this” | Karapaia
By Palmo
Published: 2026-11-15 08:00
Source: sciencedirect.com / Original article here
What people said
Open the door
I'm hungry
I'm cold
Play with me
Didn't need a whole study to tell us that much
I threw up
There's also "clean this mess up"
Meows so much it gets irritating
14 years since I took him in
Still meowing nonstop
Still have no idea what he wants
By the way, he's the only male
Maybe he's starved for affection and just desperately wants attention?
You see that type sometimes among strays too. And among humans, for that matter.
It sounds way too sad written like that — switch your IME to the kanji for "meow" (鳴く) instead of "cry" (泣く), same reading, very different vibe
Basically "I don't want to be stuck in here with those guys, somebody help me out"
You could build one yourself with AI at this point
Same with thunder — ears flat, looking up, saying something
Hey, it's not MY fault!
Apparently once the shaking starts, if you pick the cat up and soothe it like you're comforting it, you can trick it into calming down
When I wake up there are like 5 different toys neatly scattered across the futon
Get up already
Hurry up and feed me
Hurry up and take me for a walk
Make sure you clean up properly on the walk
Even if you go out, hurry back
Take me to the dog run once in a while
Go to sleep already
Some cats can even kind of say "gohan" themselves
Though because of how their mouths are shaped it comes out sounding like "ohan"
Both cats and dogs understand it
They understand "walk" too
Mother cats call their kittens when it's chow time, right? Though pet cats raised by humans might not do that anymore.
What did you think it meant this whole time?
Isn't the point that they took a hunch and actually researched it to reach a solid conclusion?
Your education level is showing with that comment
Cats might have some other way of telling each other what they want, but it's probably a different method than however they signal to humans by meowing, at least.
The only time cats meow at each other is when threatening one another or when searching around for something
They seem to understand what you're saying to some degree, it's just that whether they actually obey is apparently entirely up to them
Dogs being THIS obedient feels almost strange by comparison
Dogs rank the family members in a hierarchy
If you rank low, you get treated like their underling
Humans actively domesticated dogs ourselves, but we never really did anything to cats
Those guys just shamelessly decided to plant themselves next to humans on their own
They cough up hairballs sometimes too, which is a pain
Dogs love you way more intensely, and with small birds it's basically life-or-death lol
Some cats love deeply too, but they don't tend to spiral into anything self-destructive over it, so they're easier on the nerves
(Riffing on the famous line from Grave of the Fireflies) "Setsuko, that's not a Doraemon. That's your wife."
Maybe it's actually complaining "gross, gross"?
Apparently that's about the mental age of a 2-year-old human
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HXDjaEpawAA4Lyx.jpg:orig#.jpg
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
Research into feline vocalizations has been building for a while now, and it was already known that kittens meow a lot at their mothers while grown cats rarely meow at each other, relying instead on scent and body language to communicate. In other words, the claim that meowing is a method “reserved exclusively for humans” isn’t itself a brand-new finding, and it lined up well with what the cat owners in the thread reported from firsthand experience. Where the thread split was over how well owners could actually read the specific content of a demand — some said a meow told them almost exactly what their cat wanted, while others admitted they still couldn’t figure it out even after years with the same cat. As for the contrast between dogs and cats — both domesticated by the same species, yet so different in obedience — the going theory is that dogs had their obedience reinforced over a very long stretch of time, whereas cats closed the distance to humans while staying comparatively independent the whole way. The thread’s back-and-forth on this point reads as consistent with that historical difference.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Speed+) thread “The reason cats meow at humans: it’s a signal meaning “Hey, human, do something about this”.”
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