• Apytele@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    2·
    1 hour ago

    Tricks monkey into providing food and shelter like a boss

    …by murdering any creature it sees that’s less than half is size for fun, even if it ultimately decides not to eat the guts after ripping them out.

  • Supervisor194@lemmy.worldEnglish
    27·
    4 hours ago

    I don’t think they sound particularly like a human baby because I can’t stand the sound of a human baby crying but when my cat talks I melt into a useless gibbering idiot food dispenser.

    • Venus_Ziegenfalle@feddit.orgEnglish
      7·
      2 hours ago

      Yeah it’s one of those internet myths. What they do is mimic their own baby sounds aka meow even when they’re adults but that’s not really a manipulation tactic. We infantilize them by caring for them and they in turn display some of their infant behaviours. Adult tigers in captivity meow too.

      • flicker@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        2·
        20 minutes ago

        Worse than that, it’s something incels tell each other about why women aren’t having babies. Because they have cats that satisfy the maternal urge.

        For the record, babies crying- doesn’t matter if I’ve given birth to it or not- is not a “cute” sound. It is an enraging sound. It makes us move quickly because we hate it.

        If we thought baby cries were cute things we wanted to listen to, we wouldn’t hurry to help the child, and that would completely defeat the purpose of it.

  • hperrin@lemmy.caEnglish
    5·
    3 hours ago

    I’m pretty sure we provided them food and shelter because they catch rodents, not because they “mimic babies” (??)

  • Cid Vicious@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    45·
    6 hours ago

    Incidentally I don’t think this is actually evolution; more learned behavior. They repeat the tone we respond to the most. My cat also bites my foot when he wants attention because he has learned that it’s hard for me to ignore.

    • Glytch@lemmy.worldEnglish
      13·
      4 hours ago

      They repeat the tone we respond to the most.

      I once had a cat that learned to imitate my text message notification sound (at the time it was Tiny Tina saying “pooow”) just to get my attention. He would also scream his lungs out if he thought no one was home.

    • samus12345@lemm.eeEnglish
      23·
      5 hours ago

      Cats were perfectly positioned to coexist with humans - they eat the pests that feed on our grain, aren’t large enough to be much of a threat, aren’t a good food source, and are soft and nice to pet. Explains why they self-domesticated more than once in different parts of the world!