A recent study has revealed that cats cannot distinguish between different emotions in human voices.

According to the study published by the British newspaper 'Daily Mail,' cats treat laughter, crying, screaming, and cheering as similar sound signals, leading them to a comparable level of alertness and anxiety.

The researchers conducted an experiment on 20 domestic cats by playing recordings of human voices expressing joy, sadness, anger, and fear, while monitoring their movements, ear positions, pupil dilation, and tail movements.

The results showed that the cats' responses were similar in all cases, with no significant difference between one type of emotion and another.

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Researchers believe that cats respond more to the intensity of the sound than its emotional content, as they treat any human voice as a stimulus for attention, without interpreting whether it expresses happiness, sadness, or anger.

The study confirmed that these results do not mean that cats are unable to perceive their owners' emotions, as previous research indicates that they can understand the emotional state when the tone of voice is combined with facial expressions and body language, especially if the voice is familiar to them.

Researchers suggested that this behavior represents an evolutionary strategy that helped cats survive, as it prioritizes raising alertness when hearing any unfamiliar sound before attempting to interpret it, a mechanism that still accompanies them even after becoming pets.

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