Vaguely recall hearing that cats developed meowing solely as a means of communicating to humans. They don't do it around anyone else.
As to my fave animalistic Field Recordings: I love the final track on Songs of the Humpback Whale, Three Whale Trip. It legitimately sounds like some trippy electronic piece. There's a cool album called "Broken Hearted Dragonflies: Insect Electronica From Southeast Asia" that lives up to its name. Jim Nollman's recordings with wolfpacks, Turkeys and the like is nice, too. I don't think people realise how much more Folkways Records did than just document folk's ways. Lester Bangs wrote about a proto-Industrial thing called Sounds of the Junkyard they put out, but I have a couple of other nature recordings by them. The one I can remember off the top of my head is Sounds of North American Frogs, which knocks Paul McCartney into a cocked hat.
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