Hear Tilly purring here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMH0Q-3hEcw |
We purr, therefore we are. Yet the purr means different things, depending on what is happening around us.
An example of the happy relaxed purr can be found here It is my friend, Tilly, being stroked. Yet we also purr (with a tiny cry inside the purr) when we want something. Purrhaps when we want food from our humans.
And finally, some of us purr when we are at the veterinary surgery. It's a way of trying to soothe our anxiety and it may even help our pain.
But how do we make this low noise? We are only small animals and small animals make high rather than low noises? Scientists used to think we were moving the muscles of our voicebox or larynx.
Now they think it may be because we have pads on our vocal chords which press together and then start vibrating automatically, making this low noise.
Aren't we wonderful?
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