#imagine picking up a slugcat and it just makes the most bloodcurdling screech possible despite being otherwise silent...

[gay-artificer]

Regarding your tags about vibrational communication on the slugcat body language post, thats something I have been thinking about for a while too! I don't know much about vibrational communication, so I'd definitely have to look into it at least somewhat.

But from what I can tell as a layman regarding these things (or maybe I am wrong), it would make sense that an animal lacking so many natural defenses would communicate in a way that their predators might not be able to pick up on, right? Slugcats lack armour or natural weapons many other animals in rain world have, they can bite, but that doesn't seem too effective either. They have knowledge on using spears now but they must have gotten to that point first, so perhaps a slugcat ancestor evolved to be as inconspicuous as possible, including their communication?

I will definitely include your slugcat pheromones idea into my belief system, I love the idea that slugcats are actually trying to communicate with iterators but they just cannot pick up on any of it.

Inconspicuous communication is a big thing for prey animals yeah- Its why most body signs are fairly subtle. You'll notice that conspicuous communication tends to have cause or trade off- for example, if youre a predator stalking a community of small animals like birds and they sound the alarm and go on alert, not only are they all now on look out- you as a predator are also aware you've been caught. This gives the predator a 'we know' warning and makes it weigh its options on if its worth still investing in an attempt or backing off. If birds are being showy to mates by dancing and singing, it puts a bit of a target on them sure, but they are also displaying confidence in their ability to do these displays without issue. Likewise, intimidation sounds are just that- loud noises meant to scare. Both just in the fact something making a loud sound suddenly is scary (and can get a predator to back off or drop you if you've been grabbed), but it also tells everything else in the area that its happening. Most things in the world have something else they don't want to pick a fight with, so grabbing the interest of anything else that might want to investigate is a good deterrent.

Communication via vibration im very inexperienced with. The biggest examples I can think of is fish (which use sounds like pops and crackles, or by grinding parts of their bodies) and elephants which we have evidence of them using seismic ground vibrations as a means of communication. Insects also use it a lot, but thats mostly as a method of producing sound (which for bugs, your options are basically 'vibrate really hard' or 'squeeze air out of your body really fast'). I do know it goes deeper than that though.