MEOWSIC PROJECT BLOG

We will do our best to keep you updated about our project activities, including our studies, data collection of cat vocalisations and cat–directed speech, perception tests (how do cats perceive different speaking styles in human speech?, how do human listeners judge different melodies in cat vocalisations?), analyses, reports from project meetings, talks, conferences, etc.

INVITED TALK: UNIVERSITY OF TARTU

4 October 2022

Susanne gave a Zoom talk about the project at The TÜling talk series at the University of Tartu, Estonia.

THE PROJECT OFFICIALLY ENDS

30 June 2022

The project members gratefully acknowledge the support from The Marcus and Amalia Wallenberg Foundation and thanks everyone (cats as well as humans) who have made this project possible.

LIVE INTERVIEW IN SWEDISH TV 4 SHOW MALOU EFTER TIO

5 October 2021

Susanne was interviewed in the Swedish TV4 show Malou Efter Tio about her research on cat–human communication and the project.

INTERVIEW IN SKÅNSKA DAGBLADET

28 September 2021

Susanne was interviewed in the Swedish Newspaper Skånska Dagbladet about the project and her research on cat–human communication.

DN INTERVIEW

10 September 2021

Susanne was interviewed in the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter.

TV4 INTERVIEW

10 September 2021

Susanne was interviewed on the national Swedish TV channel TV4.

INTERVIEW IN SWEDISH RADIO

10 September 2021

Susanne was interviewed on Swedish local radio P4 Malmöhus and aslo in P4 Extra.

IG NOBEL PRIZE CEREMONY 2021

9 September 2021

The IG Nobel Prize Ceremony was an online event. Click below to watch the ceremony (The biology Prize is 11.50-16.40).

IG NOBEL PRIZE 2021

9 September 2021

The team was awarded the 2021 IG Nobel Prize  in biology "for  analyzing variations in purring, chirping, chattering, trilling, tweedling, murmuring, meowing, moaning, squeaking, hissing, yowling, howling, growling, and other modes of cat–human communication". 

ADVANCED STUDY GROUP STARTED

October 2020

INTERCOM is a new Advanced Study Group at the Pufendorf Institute on Interspecific Communication. The group has members from numerous disciplines and will study a number of research questions related to interspecific communication.

QUIZ  WITH CAT SOUNDS IN SVT

October 2020

Swedish National Television borrowed some cat sounds from the project data for a cat sound quiz

INTERVIEW IN SWEDISH NATIONAL TELEVISION (SVT)

17 October 2020

Susanne was interviewed in Swedish National Television about the project.

FUTURE WEEK: CAT QUIZ

October 2020

In collaboration with Lund University and the Humanities Lab we have put together a small quiz with sounds by cats in positive or negative situations. Can you tell which is which?

PROJECT VIDEO

October 2020

Susanne and Joost were interviewed about the project in this video produced by Victoria Johansson and Peter Roslund at Lund University Humanities Lab.

SWEDISH NATIONAL BOOK FAIR

September 2020

Susanne was interviewed about the project and her book at the Lund University digital national book fair.

MEOW ANALYSES IN PROGRESS

February–October 2020

For some time now we have been analysing meow intonation in different contexts and mental states using a number of different methods. The picture shows an example of how meows produced in positive mental states seem to have a more positive slope (i.e. rising contour) than meows produced in negative mental states (Thanks to Andrey Anikin for helping with R scripts).

Interview in German newpaper TZ

January 2020

Susanne was interviewed about cat communication in the German newspaper TZ.

INTERVIEW IN READER'S DIGEST

January 2020

Susanne was interviewed about the phonetics of the human cat-direted sound "Pspspsps".

ARTICLE ON BRAZILIAN WEBSITE

January 2020

Article about the Meowsic project and Susanne's book The secret Language of Cats on the Brazilian website Anda.

INTERVIEW IN GERMAN RADIO

November 2019

Susanne was interviewed in the German Radio Program Grünstreifen, Deutschlandfunk Nova about the project and the phonetics of cat sounds.

INTERVIEW IN SWEDISH RADIO

October 2019

Susanne and Joost were interviewed in the Swedish national radio (SR P1) program "Vetandets Värld" (in Swedish) about our project.

INTERVIEW IN ZEIT WISSEN

October 2019

Susanne was interviewed in the German magazine Zeit Wissen (Nr6 2019) about our project.

VIDEOS OF VIHAR PRESENTATIONS

October 2019

VIdeos of all the presentations given at VIHAR 2019 are now available online.

PROCEEDINGS OF VIHAR 2019

September 2019

The proceedings of VIHAR 2019 are now available for download.

VIHAR 2019

August 2019

Joost and Susanne presented our results from our Study 1 at the 2nd International Workshop on Vocal Interactivity in-and-between Humans, Animals and Robots (VIHAR), 29-30 August 2019, in London, UK.

Fonetik 2019

June 2019

We presented two Meowsic-related studies at the Swedish National Phonetics conference in Stockholm June 10-12, 2019.

Study 1: Our first results

May 2019

After careful analysis of meow vocalisations produced by 40 cats we have now been able to compare melody contours representing average values for the different contexts and mental states by visual inspection  of the contours.

Analysis in progress

May 2019

We are now running acoustic analysis on our collected data — mainly the duration (length) fundamental frequency (pitch and melody) — in order to learn more about the variation between different types of meowing (by cats in different mental states and in different behavioural contexts).

Swedish translation of The Secret Language of Cats out now

January 2019

Susanne's own translation into Swedish of her book The Secret Language of Cats is now available.

Interview in Swedish Television

January 2019

Susanne Schötz was interviewed about the project and her book in TV4's Nyhetsmorgon.

Interview in Dagens Nyheter

December 2018

Susanne Schötz was interviewed about the project in Dagens Nyheter—one of Sweden's leading newspapers. 

New book :  The Secret Language of Cats 

November 2018

Susanne Schötz's  book about cat sounds and a chapter about the Meowsic project now available in English.

More that 1000 cat vocalisations catagorized and labelled

November 2018

We now have segmented, categorised and also labelled the context and mental state of the cat for over 1000 cat vocalisations. The beautiful Maine Coone Ani in the picture has contributed with numerous trills and growls. (Photo taken from video sent to us by Ani's owner Joakim Gustafson)

Interview with Susanne Schötz on Swedish television

19 November 2018

Susanne Schötz was interviewed (via Skype) about our project in the Swedish news show Aftonbladet morgon.

Interview with Robert Eklund on Swedish national television

7 November 2018

Robert Eklund was interviewed about our project in the Swedish national television (Kunskapskanalen) show Språknyheterna (The Language News) .

Articles about the project in Swedish media 

November 2018

Several interviews and articles were published about the project in Swedish media, including Forskning.se, Land, and  Året runt.

Seminar at Linköping University

September 2019

Robert Eklund led a seminar about our project at Linköping University.

Interview in German TV show

August 2018

Susanne Schötz was interviewed in the German TV show Kölner Sommertreff (WDR).

Data Collection in Linköping and Stockholm

Summer 2018

Robert Eklund continues to record vocalisations from cats in Linköping and Stockholm. We now have data from 70 (!) cats. One of them is Missy, the beautiful cat in the picture.

Articles in Swedish Magazines

Summer 2018

Several interviews and articles about our project were published in Swedish newspapers and magazines.

Austrian TV show

July 2018

Susanne Schötz was invited to "Stöckl", an Austrian (ORF) TV talkshow, broadcasted 26 July 2018.

Radio Interview

June 2018

In a radio interview (Swedish SR P4 Östergötland)  Robert Eklund gave an update on the project and our current data collection. The beautiful cat in the picture is called Zombie.

Initial analyses 

May 2018

Now we are finally beginning to analyse our material of cat sounds. The picture shows one of the first F0 analyses of meows in different contexts, based on 9 cats. Stay tuned for more analyses.

Talks and Interviews in Germany

April 19–21 2018

Susanne gave several interviews and talks about the project in Munich and Wiesbaden (in Germany).

Interviews in Germany and Sweden

March–April 2018

Susanne was interviewed in German (SWR2 Matinee) and Swedish (SR Sisuradio – a Finish-speaking program) radio about the project.

Data collection in Stockholm

February 2018

Robert and Susanne recorded ten cats in the Stockholm area and Robert is continuing to collect data in the Stockholm and Linköping areas. Thank you Göran (the beautiful red cat in the picture) and all other cats and owners for your help!

Interview on the Swiss television show Aeschbacher

January 2018

Susanne Schötz was interviewed about the project on the Swiss television show Aeschbacher, which was broadcasted on January 7, 2018.

Data collection continues in Scania (Skåne)

December 2017–January 2018

We are contuinuing to collect data from Scanian cats. The handsome Birman cat Simba in the picture is deaf, but we were able to record some nice vocalisations anyway.

Several interviews in radio and TV about our projects and whether cats have dialects

November 2017

Susanne Schötz was interviewed about our projects by Swedish Radio and TV (e.g. Radio P4 Väst, SR Ekot, TV 4, and Radio P4). 

Article about our project in Swedish newspapers HD and SDS

November 26, 2017

Susanne Schötz was interviewed about the project, and some video examples from our project website were used in the online article to illustrate different cat vocalisation types. 

Lund University Jubilee Course 

November 23, 2017

Susanne Schötz gave a lecture at the Lund University Jubilee Course about our project and about the different cat sound categories that we are using in our research (in Swedish).

Data Collection in Scania (Skåne)

October-November 2017

We are currently collecting data from cats in Scania in the south of Sweden. The cats often wear small microphones attached to their collars, while their owners wear a videocamera on their heads (a GoPro). In this video you can see the cat Moses greeting his owner with meows, and then he gets his dinner.

Data collection with new microphones

August–September, 2017

Our data collection has improved since we started to use new (small and utralight) bluetooth microphones which attach nicely to a cat collar.

Lund University 350th Anniversary Party

September 15, 2017

Susanne Schötz talked about our project at the Lund University 350th anniversary party in Lundagård in Lund.

VIHAR 2017

August 25-26, 2017

Susanne Schötz gave a talk about our project at VIHAR 2017 satellite workshop  in Skövde.

Interspeech 2017

August 20-25, 2017

We got a chance to talk to one of our consultants –  Prof. Em. John Ohala – about our project at the Interspeech conference in Stockholm

Pilot data collection

October 11,  2016

In October we continued to test and evaluate different types of recording equipment and collected a large number of nice meows.

Welcome Day at Lund University

October 12 and 26, 2016

Susanne Schötz gave popular scientific talks about the project and related research at the Welcome Day for New Employees at Lund University 12 (in Swedish) and 26 (in English) October 2016.

University of California at Berkeley

September 13, 2016

Robert Eklund presented our project at an invited talk at the University of California at Berkeley, Department of Linguistics 13 September 2016, and also gave popular science talks at Linköping University in September 2016. 

Student project presentation

September 6, 2016

Speech and Language Pathology (SLP) student Irma Hammar, who has been working in our project during the summer, reported her project results at the Medicine Faculty at Lund University. Irma has collected information on where and how cats are used in animal assisted thearpy (AAT) within the field of SLP in Sweden and other countries.

Pilot data collection

August–September 2016

In August and September 2016 we were running Pilot test with our new miniature cameras and our other equipment to find out which setups are best suited for collecting cat vocalisation data. Click on the image above to check out the pilot video!

Radio Interviews

August–September 2016

The project is still getting a lot of media attention. We have made several radio and TV interviews in Sweden and other countries.

The news about our project is spreading

February-April 2016

In February, March and Aprtil 2016 articles about our project were published in Sweden, UK, USA, Switzerland, Spain, Chile, Australia and many other countries. We have also given several radio and TV interviews that have been broadcasted in Sweden and other countries.

First tests of equipment

February 2016

In February 2016 we sneak previewed and tested some of the recording equipment and techniques we are planning to use in the project.

First project meeting

January 28, 2016

On January 28, 2016 we held our very first project meeting in Lund to begin planning our project.

Project cake

January 19, 2016

On January 19, 2016 we celebrated our project grant in the Humanities Lab at Lund University with "project cake".

PILOT DATA COLLECTION VIDEO

This video was shot in August 2016 using multiple cameras, including miniature cameras attached to the cats' collars.