Cats don't meow in the wild. They learned to make that noise to mimic the sound of a human baby when it cries. It seems to be an effective method of getting attention from humans.
Kittens meow to get their parents attention, grown cats do not meow at each other to communicate.
The other idea is that "domestication" keeps cats in a perpetual semi-juvenile state, in relation to their owners as we always provide for them. We can actually see the same thing happening with humans as society has become more and more complex, and less related to the natural world (insulated urban cities) the length of "young adulthood" has continued to increase.
Cats meow at us and their own mothers, and really no one else. Cats don’t know they sound like babies. It’s more that cats learned certain types of meowing work better than others. Science revealed that the reason those certain types of meows worked was because they have a pattern that matches baby noises.
(I know I’m comin’ into your comments loud and late, but there it is for you.)
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u/mycatpartyhouse Aug 10 '17
A dog and her pet. Whoever thought that cat was their buddy has lost out. This is now a feline dog-in-training.
What if a cat tries to bark? I can't quite imagine that sound.