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Context-dependent alarm responses in wild vervet monkeys.
Deshpande, Adwait; van de Waal, Erica; Zuberbühler, Klaus.
Afiliação
  • Deshpande A; Department of Comparative Cognition, Institute of Biology, University of Neuchatel, Neuchatel, Switzerland. adwait.deshpande2390@gmail.com.
  • van de Waal E; Inkawu Vervet Project, Mawana Game Reserve, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. adwait.deshpande2390@gmail.com.
  • Zuberbühler K; Department of Collective Behavior, Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, Constance, Germany. adwait.deshpande2390@gmail.com.
Anim Cogn ; 26(4): 1199-1208, 2023 Jul.
Article em En | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-36930451
The alarm calls of nonhuman primates are occasionally cited as functionally equivalent to lexical word meaning in human language. Recently, however, it has become increasingly unlikely that one-to-one relations between alarm call structures and predator categories are the default, mainly because many call types are produced in multiple contexts, requiring more complex notions of meaning. For example, male vervet monkeys produce the same alarm calls during encounters with terrestrial predators and neighbouring groups, suggesting that recipients require additional information to attribute meaning to the calls. We empirically tested the hypothesis that vervet monkeys take contextual information into account when responding to each other's alarm calls. In playback experiments, we exposed subjects to recordings of male alarm barks during actual intergroup encounters (predator unlikely) or when there was no intergroup encounter (predator likely). Subjects responded more strongly in the no intergroup encounter situations, typically associated with discovering a hiding predator, measured in terms of startle responses, vigilance behaviour and gazing towards the presumed caller. We discuss the significance of using contextual information for meaning attribution in nonhuman primate communication.
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Texto completo: 1 Base de dados: MEDLINE Assunto principal: Vocalização Animal / Comunicação Limite: Animals / Humans / Male Idioma: En Ano de publicação: 2023 Tipo de documento: Article

Texto completo: 1 Base de dados: MEDLINE Assunto principal: Vocalização Animal / Comunicação Limite: Animals / Humans / Male Idioma: En Ano de publicação: 2023 Tipo de documento: Article