The influence of individual features on the vocalisation of cats of different breeds
Résumé
Vocal communication of cats includes a wide range of sounds from quiet purrs and trills to loud distress vocalizations. Cats are said to have one of the widest ‘vocabularies’ of all carnivore species, and this may be related to the fact that in the natural environment vocal communication is important when they spend much active time in poor lighting conditions. There is a surprisingly small number or papers devoted to cat vocalization. Importantly, all previous research has been conducted on cross-breed house cats. No one has ever tried to study the parameters of feline vocalization of pure breed cats. The purpose of this work was to check whether individual features like sex, sterilisation, age, breed, and place of living influence their vocalisation. Vocal recordings from 20 adult Siberian cats, 10 Persian cats and 10 Neva Masquerade cats were collected and used in a phonetic study in order to test recording and analysis methods. Cats' responses to behavioural stimuli (isolation - closing a cat in a cage for 3 minutes) were recorded. Vocalizations were detected and segmented, with voiced and unvoiced vocalizations being differentiated. The recordings were processed using PRAAT, Raven Pro and Audacity software. The vocalizations were analysed and compared for duration, formants, pitch, jitter, shimmer and other acoustic parameters. One of the interesting results is the fact that cats living in the same colony have some similar sound parameters, even if the cats are not related.
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