Nonlinear vocal phenomena affect human perceptions of distress, size and dominance in puppy whines

Massenet, Mathilde; Anikin, Andrey; Pisanski, Katarzyna; Reynaud, Karine; Mathevon, Nicolas; Reby, David

doi:10.1098/rspb.2022.0429

Cited by 12 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 67 publications

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“…Based on our ndings, NLP production in indris does not vary according to sex and does not seem to encode information for conspeci cs, in disagreement with previous ndings on baboons' loud calls (Fischer et al 2004), humpback whales' songs (Cazau et al 2016), and rock hyraxes' songs (Demartsev et al 2016). Furthermore, our results disagree with the unpredictability hypothesis that NLP may be produced more by younger individuals to make their signals harder to ignore (Fitch et al 2002;Massenet et al 2022). Therefore, we reject our latest two predictions.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 98%

Singing more, singing harsher: occurrence of nonlinear phenomena in a primate' song

Cristiano

Raimondi

Valente

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Nonlinear phenomena (NLP) in animal vocalizations arise from irregularities in the oscillation of the vocal folds. Various hypotheses have been put forward to explain the occurrence of NLP, from adaptive to physiological ones. Non-human primates often display NLP in their vocalizations, yet the meaning of these features is still unclear. We present here the first study of NLP occurrence in the song of a singing primate: the indri (Indri indri). We found that the more an individual sings, the higher the likelihood of emitting NLP. Our results show that NLP occurrence in indri depends on phonation, i.e., the cumulative duration of all the units emitted by an individual. Furthermore, NLP occurrence depends on the timing of the signal and increases as the singing progresses. Our findings suggest that indris may be subjected to physiological constraints during the singing process which may limit the production of harmonic sounds because of the fatigue needed to perform loud and long calls. However, indris may still benefit from emitting NLP by strengthening the loudness of their signals for better advertising their presence to the neighboring conspecific groups.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 98%

Singing more, singing harsher: occurrence of nonlinear phenomena in a primate' song

Cristiano

Raimondi

Valente

et al. 2022

Preprint

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“…In sum, our study suggests that crocodiles identify and respond proportionately to different levels of distress in hominid infant cries. This behaviour is elicited by acoustic features otherwise known to be markers of distress in vocalizations [13][14][15][16]18,54,55]. Our experiments obviously do not mean that crocodiles cannot be attracted by other signals than distress calls (they are opportunistic hunters), but they suggest that the readiness of these animals to react increases with the presence of acoustic features marking a level of distress (nonlinear acoustic phenomena).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 68%

“…These nonlinear phenomena (frequency jumps, subharmonics, deterministic chaos and sidebands) [12] are the main cause for the typical roughness of vocalizations related to high arousal. The arousal level of a distress call is accordingly correlated with the amount of acoustic nonlinearity [13][14][15][16][17][18]. Nonlinear acoustic phenomena are therefore good candidates to encode distress in the sound signals across animal species.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For instance, people who live with pets often claim to be able to decipher emotions such as distress, joy or surprise, by listening to their companion meow or bark [19][20][21]. Livestock and pet professionals often agree [22][23][24], and they even seem to be able to decode more finely than non-professionals the vocalizations of domestic animals (see the recent paper by Massenet et al on the perception of puppy whines by humans [14]). However, individual impressions, while suggesting the existence of inter-species communication, do not provide objective information about the processes of decoding the emotions carried by acoustic signals.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Crocodile perception of distress in hominid baby cries

et al. 2023

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It is generally argued that distress vocalizations, a common modality for alerting conspecifics across a wide range of terrestrial vertebrates, share acoustic features that allow heterospecific communication. Yet studies suggest that the acoustic traits used to decode distress may vary between species, leading to decoding errors. Here we found through playback experiments that Nile crocodiles are attracted to infant hominid cries (bonobo, chimpanzee and human), and that the intensity of crocodile response depends critically on a set of specific acoustic features (mainly deterministic chaos, harmonicity and spectral prominences). Our results suggest that crocodiles are sensitive to the degree of distress encoded in the vocalizations of phylogenetically very distant vertebrates. A comparison of these results with those obtained with human subjects confronted with the same stimuli further indicates that crocodiles and humans use different acoustic criteria to assess the distress encoded in infant cries. Interestingly, the acoustic features driving crocodile reaction are likely to be more reliable markers of distress than those used by humans. These results highlight that the acoustic features encoding information in vertebrate sound signals are not necessarily identical across species.

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“…Previous research provided various explanations for the occurrence of NLP in animal vocalizations. A broad of evidence shows that the emergence of nonlinearities in mammalian vocalizations may reflect the emotional state of the emitter, e.g., stress or arousal (Blumstein and Récapet 2009 ; Blesdoe and Blumstein 2014 ; Fuchs et al 2021 ; Marx et al 2021 ; Massenet et al 2022 ). Such sounds are indeed often associated with aversive states, such as rage, pain, and fear in animals, including humans (Anikin 2020 ; Marx et al 2021 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Singing more, singing harsher: occurrence of nonlinear phenomena in a primate’ song

et al. 2023

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Nonlinear phenomena (NLP) in animal vocalizations arise from irregularities in the oscillation of the vocal folds. Various non-mutually exclusive hypotheses have been put forward to explain the occurrence of NLP, from adaptive to physiological ones. Non-human primates often display NLP in their vocalizations, yet the communicative role of these features, if any, is still unclear. We here investigate the occurrence of NLP in the song of a singing primate, the indri (Indri indri), testing for the effect of sex, age, season, and duration of the vocal display on their emission. Our results show that NLP occurrence in indri depends on phonation, i.e., the cumulative duration of all the units emitted by an individual, and that NLP have higher probability to be emitted in the later stages of the song, probably due to the fatigue indris may experience while singing. Furthermore, NLP happen earlier in the vocal display of adult females than in that of the adult males, and this is probably due to the fact that fatigue occurs earlier in the former because of a greater contribution within the song. Our findings suggest, therefore, that indris may be subjected to physiological constraints during the singing process which may impair the production of harmonic sounds. However, indris may still benefit from emitting NLP by strengthening the loudness of their signals for better advertising their presence to the neighboring conspecific groups.

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Nonlinear vocal phenomena affect human perceptions of distress, size and dominance in puppy whines

Cited by 12 publications

References 67 publications

Singing more, singing harsher: occurrence of nonlinear phenomena in a primate' song

Singing more, singing harsher: occurrence of nonlinear phenomena in a primate' song

Crocodile perception of distress in hominid baby cries

Singing more, singing harsher: occurrence of nonlinear phenomena in a primate’ song

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