Tigers Don’t Just Roar, One of Their Sounds Is Too Low for Humans to Hear

Quick Take

• Tigers make a sound so low it falls below the threshold of human hearing, and researchers think this serves a specific purpose. Discover tiger infrasound →
• The anatomy behind a tiger's roar is stranger than you'd expect, with fat playing a bigger role than lung size. Explore the roar anatomy →
• Tigers have a 'friendly' vocalization that keepers hear during greetings, and it sounds nothing like a roar. Hear about chuffing →
• Researchers are now using tiger sounds to track wild populations without ever needing to see the animals. See the Prusten Project →

Tigers are famous for roaring, but that is a little like describing every human conversation as shouting. These mostly solitary cats communicate with scent, scratches, body posture, their tails, and a surprisingly large collection of sounds.

Some calls carry across long distances. Others are quiet enough to use between a mother and her cubs. One friendly sound is made through the nose, while part of a full roar can dip below the normal range of human hearing. The tiger vocabulary is much stranger—and more nuanced—than one dramatic roar.

Tigers Have a Much Bigger Vocabulary Than Most People Realize

Tigers growl, roar, moan, hiss, snarl, grunt, and chuff. Keepers and researchers also describe shorter calls with human approximations such as “woof,” “mrr,” “arf,” or “owh.” Those labels are imperfect, but they help distinguish sounds that do not fit neatly into familiar categories.

The meaning depends on the sound, the body language accompanying it, and the situation. A loud roar can advertise a tiger’s presence or play a role in mating. A snarl paired with flattened ears and exposed teeth is a warning. A soft chuff between familiar animals communicates something entirely different.

Cubs begin with high-pitched squeaks, whines, and mew-like calls that help them stay connected to their mother. Their voices deepen as they grow, eventually developing the powerful low-frequency sounds associated with adult tigers.

The Friendly Sound Tigers Make Instead of Purring

Tigers do not produce the continuous, domestic-cat-style purr many people expect. They chuff. Also called prusten, a chuff is created when a tiger keeps its mouth closed and pushes short bursts of air through its nostrils. The result sounds like a soft, breathy snort.

Chuffing is generally a friendly social sound. Keepers hear it during greetings, courtship, and interactions between mothers and cubs. Jaguars, clouded leopards, and some other big cats make similar sounds. If a tiger chuffs at a familiar keeper or another tiger, that is a much more relaxed message than bared teeth and a growl.

Tigers also use contact calls. Zoo Atlanta’s keepers describe one as an “owwWW” sound that may be repeated several times. Their Sumatran tigers have used it after switching between indoor and outdoor spaces, apparently announcing their presence after returning to a shared area.

Which Tiger Sounds Mean “Back Off”?

Growling, snarling, and hissing are commonly associated with defensive or aggressive encounters. A mother protecting cubs may use these warnings against another tiger or anything else she considers a threat. The sound is only part of the message; tense posture, pinned ears, and exposed teeth remove most of the ambiguity.

Short, abrupt calls described as barks or woofs may occur when a tiger is startled, agitated, or responding to something nearby. Recordings collected by the Prusten Project show how difficult it can be to squeeze every tiger noise into one tidy label. Examples remain available in the project’s recording archive.

Researchers have also described shorter roar-like sequences as mini-roars or click-growls. These calls are less sustained than a full roar, but in a tense encounter they can still deliver a fairly unmistakable warning.

A Tiger’s Roar Is Built to Travel

Under favorable conditions, a tiger’s roar can be heard from close to two miles away. That range is useful for a mostly solitary animal communicating across dense forest or a large territory. Tigers may roar to advertise their presence, communicate during breeding, warn rivals, or maintain contact with cubs.

Vocalizations are only one part of tiger courtship. A San Diego Zoo tiger fact sheet also notes scent marking and other signals associated with reproductive behavior.

A big body and powerful lungs help, but the real machinery is in the larynx. Research on lion and tiger vocal folds found unusually large folds with broad, square-edged surfaces and deep layers containing fat. That shape lets the tissue vibrate efficiently at relatively low lung pressures while producing an enormous, rough-sounding call.

The folds are also remarkably thick. Measurements reported in research on tiger and lion voices found tissue more than two centimeters thick in some specimens. Siberian tigers are enormous animals, but size alone does not create that roar. The shape and mechanical properties of the vocal folds matter just as much.

Some Tiger Roars Drop Below Human Hearing

Human hearing is generally described as extending down to about 20 hertz, although the precise threshold varies. Acoustic researchers recording Siberian and Bengal tigers measured the fundamental frequency of some roars at roughly 17.5 hertz. That places part of the vocalization in the infrasonic range.

Low-frequency sound also travels efficiently over long distances, which could benefit an animal communicating through dense habitat. Researchers have proposed possible roles in territorial and reproductive communication. What the evidence does not yet support is the more dramatic idea that tigers use a fully understood secret “infrasound language.” We know the low frequencies are there; their exact purpose is still being studied.

Can Tigers Meow?

Adult tigers do not normally make the small, familiar “meow” associated with a house cat. Saying they are incapable of anything meow-like, however, goes too far. Cubs produce high-pitched calls described as mews or miaows, while adults make softer “mrr” and moo-like sounds that can sound surprisingly catlike.

Big cats such as tigers and lions have vocal anatomy specialized for roaring. Differences in their hyoid apparatus, vocal tract, and especially their vocal folds help create powerful low-frequency calls. The old explanation that one ligament simply allows roaring while preventing every other catlike sound is much too neat.

Why Can’t Tigers Purr?

Under the usual scientific definition of purring, tigers cannot produce the continuous sound a domestic cat makes while breathing both in and out. A relaxed tiger is hardly silent, though. Chuffing fills a similar friendly social role, and tigers use several other quiet calls.

The anatomy is more complicated than the old “one bone equals purring” explanation. Tigers have a partly ligamentous hyoid apparatus and large, flexible vocal folds adapted for roaring. Those thick vocal-fold pads may make the rapid, continuous vibration required for a true purr difficult. The same general system that makes a tiger’s roar so impressive simply is not built like the one inside a house cat.

Researchers Are Trying to Identify Tigers by Voice

Tigers remain endangered. The Global Tiger Forum’s 2023 estimate, cited by WWF, placed the wild population at about 5,574 animals. That is an improvement from the roughly 3,200 estimated in 2010, but it remains a very small global population for one of the planet’s most recognizable predators.

The Prusten Project, founded by Courtney Dunn, explored whether an individual tiger could be distinguished by characteristics in its voice. Researchers collected recordings from captive tigers with the larger goal of testing passive acoustic recorders in wild habitat.

Listening is not a replacement for camera traps, genetic sampling, or field surveys. In a dense forest where a tiger may be heard without ever being seen, however, a recognizable voice could give conservationists one more way to determine who is out there.