Why your cat goes wild for that 'pspspsps' noise
By Nadia Scurria|
Cats are funny little creatures we're all still trying to figure out.
They can act like affectionate little queens and kings one minute, and become an absolute gremlin-after-midnight situation next.
What we do know is that they respond differently to different sounds จC take the classic "pspspsps", for example.
When they hear it, some cats completely freak and hide to a ridiculous extent, while others will come running to you like there's no tomorrow.
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"?There's been no research on the pspspsps sound response in cats, and we can't ask cats directly why most seem to respond to it," cat expert Mikel Delgado from Feline Minds tells Inverse
According to the website, ultimately, there are two reasonable explanations as to why cats are attentive to the sound, commonly made by people when they encounter cats.
First, is the frequency at which the 'pspspsps' reaches attracts the cats, and secondly, it's similar to sounds that can also be made by prey in the wild, whether it's a mouse rustling in a bush or a small bird about to fly, or the "chatter" of rats.
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?"[The sound] piques their curiosity, may sound familiar as it's similar to a purring sound, and it's at a frequency that makes it very easy for them to hear," Chyrle Bonk, a veterinarian at PetKeen, tells Inverse.
Ultimately, it's the sound of 'pspspsps' that attracts the cat and triggers a response.
Susanne Sch?tz, Associate Professor of Phonetics at Lund University and author of The Secret Language of Cats, states the 's' sound in 'pspspsps' operates at a frequency much higher than most speech sounds, one that cats can hear compared to humans, according to Reader's Digest.
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However, this is only one way of making such noise in the English language.
Just as cats might 'meow' in different languages, ?Sch?tz attracts her cats not only with the 'pspspsps,' but also 'ksksksks', which is the equivalent in Swedish.
According to ?research, rodents communicate in high frequency, so cats have evolved to detect it.
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