![]() Feeding Time!Īs I said before, sometimes when a cat cries, it’s all focused on something she needs – but she doesn’t need it. Is this deliberate deception that the cats have learned that the distraught child’s sound is more likely to draw human attention? Many cats will modify their voices to sound like a child’s scream. Hey, we all remember how melodramatic cats are!Īnd if you’ve ever heard your cat meowing in the middle of the night, and you thought it was a kid, you’re not alone. So, even if the noise is always alarming enough to wake you up and get you out of bed, don’t think about it. In his book The Quest for the Eastern Cougar: Extinction or Survival?, Robert Tougias writes: “The most common analogy of the puma’s vocalization is that of an adult woman screaming in terror for her life.” ( Learn how a Los Angeles cougar known for crossing freeways died.Cats are clever, and they know the strength of contact. ![]() “No man,” he stated, “could well listen to a stranger and wilder sound.” President Theodore Roosevelt, who hunted cougar, described “a loud, wailing scream through the impenetrable gloom.” While cougars (also called pumas or mountain lions) are unlikely to be heard caterwauling in people’s backyards, it’s a sound that makes a deep impression. Elusive and naturally cautious, particularly around humans, the felines are almost wholly nocturnal in urban areas, so few are ever seen. ( See pictures of cats you've never heard of.)Įven so, many people wouldn’t guess it was bobcats that woke them up. Typically a sound made by competing males in winter during the mating season, it can be heard in many regions of North America. The noise of screeching bobcats has been likened to a child wailing in distress. Like barn owls, bobcats (Lynx rufus) and cougars ( Puma concolor) rarely vocalize, but when they do, anyone listening could be forgiven for calling 911. ( Watch a mother barn owl protect her babies from a snake.) Creepy Cats And if the nest or chicks are threatened by humans or predators, barn owls emit a loud, scary hiss. Males also scream when guarding females during the spring. While barn owls, which have a worldwide distribution, often mate for life, singletons can be pretty noisy, she adds. You’ll start hearing the screams around now, Plant says, because at this time of year juvenile barn owls start seeking a mate for the first time. A species that hardly utters a sound for most of the year, its screams are also perfectly timed for Halloween. The ghostly bird’s sudden, chilling presence helps explain why the barn owl was believed to be an animal of bad omen in the past. ![]() “I have had people say to me they thought it was a woman screaming,” she adds. ![]() conservation non-profit based in Ashburton, England. “The thing with barn owls is that they fly silently so you have no idea when they’re flying towards you,” says Jo Plant of The Barn Owl Trust, a U.K. English naturalist Gilbert White, writing in the 1780s, said the owl’s cries had whole villages “imagining the church-yard to be full of goblins and spectres.” The same spooky setting is associated with the night screams of the barn owl ( Tyto alba). To have that noise so close to you on a pitch black night in a graveyard was, briefly, terrifying.” ![]() “She crept behind me, sat down about six feet away and let out an almighty scream,” Harris recalls. ![]()
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