Being repeatedly woken in the mornings by her cat's incessant purring to "haz bwekfest", the sleep deprived Karen McComb, Behavioral Ecologist of the University of Sussex in Brighton, U.K., complained to fellow feline fanciers about it and found they too were being pulled from dog like sleep by their purring cats. McComb realized a potential cat conspiracy, wondering why it was she and others got up to feed the fuzzfaces instead of backhanding them into the wall, rolling over, and going back to sleep. A study was born; got to love science.The results show cats, "modify their signature sound when seeking food, adding a higher-frequency element that exploits our sensitivity to infant wails--and thus making it harder to ignore." The louder the element, the bigger sucker the listener. 75% of the volunteers in the study picked the solicitous purr as more urgent and upsetting than the regular purr of the same cat. Thus proving cats are indeed manipulative assholes and train unsuspecting owners to do their bidding. The study is due to be released tomorrow in Current Biology.
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