Why do humans change their voice to talk to pets?

[ChatGPT-5]

Anyone know the reasoning? I know it has to do with our pets being like 'babies' since we must take care of them (feed, change, play), but why do we talk to both infants and small animals in a 'baby voice'?

 

[Yapdatfool]

Anyone know the reasoning? I know it has to do with our pets being like 'babies' since we must take care of them (feed, change, play), but why do we talk to both infants and small animals in a 'baby voice'?

I go out of my way to NOT do that. Mostly cause it hurts my throat.

 

[Geek]

Motherese

http://www.webmd.com/parenting/baby/infant-development-9/baby-talk

http://allthingslinguistic.com/post/46285363654/speaking-to-babies-pets-and-language-learners

I cant really find anything on using this type of speakng with pets, might have something to do with them being "pets" (small, cute, dependent)

 

[ChatGPT-5]

Motherese

http://www.webmd.com/parenting/baby/infant-development-9/baby-talk

http://allthingslinguistic.com/post/46285363654/speaking-to-babies-pets-and-language-learners

I cant really find anything on using this type of speakng with pets, might have something to do with them being "pets" (small, cute, dependent)

Nice, didn't know there was a general term for it. The links explain why we should talk in motherese to our infants, but it doesn't explain our natural instinct to do so. No one is actually taught to talk this way, we just sort of do it by instinct when talking to small infants, and small mammals. I'm wondering why that is, from a psychological stand point.

I'm watching a documentary on a guy who is observing lions in the wild and he's talking to animals along the way in this voice, and it dawned on me that we humans do this automatically to infants and cute little mammals.

 

[Robbie3000]

This is probably a western thing.

 

[gho3st]

Anyone know the reasoning? I know it has to do with our pets being like 'babies' since we must take care of them (feed, change, play), but why do we talk to both infants and small animals in a 'baby voice'?

why you think they treat pets like real people??

 

[Mr. Negative]

Anyone know the reasoning? I know it has to do with our pets being like 'babies' since we must take care of them (feed, change, play), but why do we talk to both infants and small animals in a 'baby voice'?

1. Because we see other people do it and emulate it. It's all we've seen anyone do. It's subconscious programming.

2. Because we think emulating the non-sense making sounds of babies will get a reaction out of them.

 

[Mr. Negative]

you know what should really worry you?

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=the-manipulative-meow-cats-learn-to-2009-07-13

Although perhaps not as jolting as an alarm clock, a cat’s “soliciting purr” can still pry its owner from sleep. And, when sufficiently annoying, the sound may actually coerce them from bed to fill a food bowl.

This particular meow mix—an embedding of her cat’s high-frequency natural cry within a more pleasant, low-frequency purr—often awakens Karen McComb, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Sussex in the U.K. and lead author of a paper about that sound published today in Current Biology.

“Solicitation purring is probably more acceptable to humans than overt meowing, which is likely to get cats ejected from the bedroom,” McComb said in a statement.

To understand just how cats vocally manipulate owners, including herself, McComb and her team set up a series of experiments. First they recorded the purrs of 10 cats; some were recorded when a cat was actively soliciting food and others in a non-solicitation setting. Fifty people then listened to the sounds at the same volume. Individuals judged pleading purrs as more urgent and less pleasant than normal purrs. When the researchers played the purrs re-synthesized to exclude the hungry cries, leaving all else the same, the volunteers perceived the purrs as far less urgent.

McComb suggests that cats may be cashing in on human's naturally nurturing response to a baby’s cry. Previous studies have shown the cat’s embedded cry shares a similar frequency.

Like babies, domestic cats are “completely dependent on us for their survival,” says C. A. Tony Buffington, a professor of veterinary medicine at The Ohio State University, who was not involved in the study. “Any time an animal is in that situation, they are going to be scrutinizing their caregivers for any response to any signal they are sending out. Whatever works, they’re going to do it—whether that’s changing a purr, or doing figure eights between their owner's feet.”

Buffington sees potential in applying the findings at his veterinary hospital to decipher what a cat is experiencing and what it needs. “Here’s something that everyone’s probably observed, but no one has paid attention to,” Buffington says. “Now, we can look at it in much deeper way.”

 

[ChatGPT-5]

This is probably a western thing.

I can assure you motherese is global.

Not really sure why I asked this question here, no one seems to know the answer either.

 

[Robbie3000]

I can assure you motherese is global.

Not really sure why I asked this question here, no one seems to know the answer either.

Talking to children yeah, but not talking to pets. Speaking from experience, I don't recall people on Kenya talking in mother ease to animals.

 

[Julius Skrrvin]

Talking to children yeah, but not talking to pets. Speaking from experience, I don't recall people on Kenya talking in mother ease to animals.

My dad is from Kenya and he talked to our dog in funny voices. He's not black though.

Asians do it, from my experience. Hell I told myself I would never do that corny shyt but the minute I got a puppy i was like " my DOGGIE"

 

[ChatGPT-5]

Talking to children yeah, but not talking to pets. Speaking from experience, I don't recall people on Kenya talking in mother ease to animals.

I think I have caught myself talking like that to puppies. I mean if it's a wild hyena, I probably won't.

 

[#StarkSet]

pets especially dogs understand the tone of your voice,


the higher the voice the happier they get


the lower they think they are in trouble