What does a cat signal with its
ears?
Unlike humans, felines have very expressive
ears. They not only change direction as the cat listens to sounds
coming from different sources, but they also adopt special postures
that reflect the emotional mood of the animals.
There are five basic ear signals, related to
the following moods: relaxed, alert, agitated, defensive and
aggressive.
In the relaxed cat the apertures of the ears
point forward and slightly outward, as the animal quietly listens
for interesting sounds over a wide range.
When the resting cat stirs itself and
focuses on some exciting detail in its surroundings, the ear
position changes into the 'alert mode'.
As it stares at the point of interest, its
ears become fully erect and rotate so that their apertures point
directly forward. The ears are kept pricked in this way as long as
the cat remains gazing straight ahead.
The only variation occurs if there is a
sudden noise away to the side of the animal, in which case an ear
may be permitted a brief rotation in that direction without a shift
of gaze.
An agitated cat, suffering from a state of
conflict, frustration or apprehension, often displays a nervous
twitching of the ears. In some species of wild cats this response
has been made highly conspicuous by the evolution of long
ear-tufts, but the domestic cat lacks this refinement and the
ear-twitching itself is less common. Slight tufting does occur in
some breeds, especially the Abyssinian where there is a small dark
hairy point to the ear, but compared with the huge ear-tufts of a
species such as the Caracal Lynx, this is a very modest
development.
A defensive cat displays fully flattened
ears. They are pressed tightly against the head as a way of
protecting them during fights.
The torn and tattered ears of battling
tom-cats are a vivid testimony to the need to hide this delicate
part of the anatomy as much as possible when the claws are out. The
effect of flattening the ears to the sides of the head is to make
them almost invisible when the animal is viewed from the front and
to give its head a more rounded outline.
There is one strange breed of cat called the
Scottish Fold which has permanently flattened ears, giving it a
continually defensive look, regardless of its true mood. What
effect this has on its social life is hard to imagine.
An aggressive cat which is hostile without
being particularly frightened has its own special ear posture.
Here, the ears are rotated but not fully flattened. The backs of
the ears become visible from the front, and this is the most
dangerous ear signal any cat can transmit.
In origin, this ear posture is half-way
between alert and defensive in other words, half-way between
pricked forward and flattened backward.
In effect, it is a 'ready for trouble'
position. The animal is saying, 'I am ready to attack, but you
don't frighten me enough to flatten my ears protectively." The
reason why this involves showing off the backs of the ears is
because they must be rotated backwards before they can be fully
flattened. So the rotated ears are in a 'ready-to-be-flattened'
posture, should the aggressive cat's opponent dare to
retaliate.
The aggressive ear posture has led to some
attractive ear-markings in a number of wild cat species, especially
the tiger, which has a huge white spot ringed with black on the
back of each ear. When a tiger is angry, there is no doubt at all
about its mood, as the pair of vivid white spots rotates into view.
Again, domestic cats lack these special markings.