Researchers from Turkey have conducted a study confirming that cats meow more to men than to women. I could have told you that myself, as, when given the choice of who to yell at, me or my wife, my cat will look at her, look at me, look at her, look at me, and then scream at me incessantly.
Publishing their findings in Ethology, two separate Turkish research teams strapped cameras to 31 cat owners and instructed them to walk through the front door of their homes. What they captured was a consistent pattern: cats lay on the meows, chirps, and purrs a whole lot more when the returning human is a male.
In the first 100 seconds of return, male caregivers received an average of 4.3 vocalizations while female caregivers got a paltry 1.8.
Why Do Cats Meow More at Men Than Women?
Some men out there might interpret this as evidence that their alpha male qualities are so potent they transcend species. Even cats recognize that they are the leader of the pack and pay them respect with vocalizations… right?
That’s not the case at all. It is probably more likely that cats know men are dumb and need a greater number and broader range of vocalizations to get their points across.
The researchers think that women tend to talk more to their cats, mimic their sounds, and generally read feline vibes better than men, who may need things to be “more explicit.”
The study controlled for everything from the cat’s breed to the number of pets in the home. None of it mattered. Only the caregiver’s biological sex predicted meow frequency. But not everyone’s convinced that meow frequency directly corresponds with male obliviousness.
Speaking to the New York Times, some critics say the study’s sample size was too small, and that since all the participants lived in Turkey, where cultural norms of how men speak could shape how cats feel they need to communicate with them.
There were also a handful of other, possibly essential variables that were not accounted for, such as how long the cat had been alone before someone reentered the home and how hungry it was at the time.
In other words, while the study’s findings are funny, especially for any male/female couples out there who own a cat and can probably attest to the veracity of these findings, it’s perhaps not enough to cement this as a commonly accepted reversal truth just yet.
Until then, if you’re a man, and your cat is meowing its lungs out at you, it’s because it thinks you’re dumb, and incessantly nagging at you is the only way to get its point across.
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