Animal Vocal Communication

Owings, Donald H.; Morton, Eugene S.

doi:10.1017/cbo9781139167901

Cited by 256 publications

(210 citation statements)

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“…The changes in harshness and frequency with context are consistent with Morton's motivation-structural rules, which state that birds and mammals use harsh, relatively low-frequency sounds when they are being hostile and higher-frequency, more tonal sounds when they are approaching in an appeasing or friendly manner, or when they are frightened (Morton 1977;Owings & Morton 1998). In addition to being higher pitched, barks in the play and isolation situations had a larger frequency range and were thus more frequency modulated.…”

Section: Acoustic Characteristics Of Barks In Different Contextssupporting

confidence: 72%

Barking in domestic dogs: context specificity and individual identification

Yin¹,

McCowan²

2004

Animal Behaviour

178

111

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Section: Acoustic Characteristics Of Barks In Different Contextssupporting

confidence: 72%

Barking in domestic dogs: context specificity and individual identification

Yin¹,

McCowan²

2004

Animal Behaviour

178

111

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“…In Diana monkeys, the concatenation of one of several possible introductory calls to the arched call unit seems to function as a contextual refiner of this contextually neutral call. The degree to which these subtleties are intentionally produced, mere reflections of a caller's motivational state (Owings and Morton 1998;Owren and Rendall 2001) or both has not been addressed by this study and will require further investigation.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Context-related call combinations in female Diana monkeys

2011

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Non-human primates possess species-specific repertoires of acoustically distinct call types that can be found in adults in predictable ways. Evidence for vocal flexibility is generally rare and typically restricted to acoustic variants within the main call types or sequential production of multiple calls. So far, evidence for context-specific call sequences has been mainly in relation to external disturbances, particularly predation. In this study, we investigated extensively the vocal behaviour of free-ranging and individually identified Diana monkeys in non-predatory contexts. We found that adult females produced four vocal structures alone ('H', 'L', 'R' and 'A' calls, the latter consisting of two subtypes) or combined in non-random ways ('HA', 'LA' and 'RA' call combinations) in relation to ongoing behaviour or external events. Specifically, the concatenation of an introductory call with the most frequently emitted and contextually neutral 'A' call seems to function as a contextual refiner of this potential individual identifier. Our results demonstrate that some non-human primates are able to increase the effective size of their small vocal repertoire not only by varying the acoustic structure of basic call types but also by combining them into more complex structures. We have demonstrated this phenomenon for a category of vocalisations with a purely social function and discuss the implications of these findings for evolutionary theories of primate vocal communication.

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“…Both Owings & Morton (1998) and Rendall et al (2009) object to the ways in which scientists studying animal communication have borrowed the term information from linguistics. Rendall et al (2009) believe that this approach is 'both teleological and circular' because it 'virtually guarantees' that animal communication and language 'will be "found" to be similar' (page 238).…”

Section: Using 'Information' In Animal Communicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The central importance of information in studies of animal communication

et al. 2010

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Keywords:animal communication animal signal information information transmission language meaningThe concept of information plays a central role in studies of animal communication. Animals' responses to the calls of different individuals, to food calls, alarm calls, and to signals that predict behaviour, all suggest that recipients acquire information from signals and that this information affects their response. Some scientists, however, want to replace the concept of information with one based on the 'manipulation' of recipients by signallers through the induction of nervous-system responses. Here we review both theory and data that argue against hypotheses based exclusively on manipulation or on a fixed, obligatory link between a signal's physical features and the responses it elicits. Results from dozens of studies indicate that calls with 'arousing' or 'aversive' features may also contain information that affects receivers' responses; that acoustically similar calls can elicit different responses; acoustically different calls can elicit similar responses; and 'eavesdropping' animals respond to the relationship instantiated by signal sequences. Animal signals encode a surprisingly rich amount of information. The content of this information can be studied scientifically.

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Animal Vocal Communication

Cited by 256 publications

References 0 publications

Barking in domestic dogs: context specificity and individual identification

Barking in domestic dogs: context specificity and individual identification

Context-related call combinations in female Diana monkeys

The central importance of information in studies of animal communication

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