Bonobos make themselves appear 'smaller' than they actually are

Date: October 23, 2018

Source: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

We can easily see whether someone is large or small, but we can also hear it in the pitch of their voice. For a long time, research on the accoustic communication in humans and animals has accepted the paradigm predicting a causal relationship between body size and voice pitch. Meanwhile, evidence from a large number of animal species has revealed that this relation does not always apply. Various animal species, including chimpanzees, have mechanisms that enable them to produce sounds that are lower than expected for their body size making them sound larger than they actually are -- a common phenomenon in animal communication.

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Great apes communicate cooperatively

May 24, 2016

Human language is a fundamentally cooperative enterprise, embodying fast-paced interactions. It has been suggested that it evolved as part of a larger adaptation of humans' unique forms of cooperation. In a cross-species comparison of bonobos and chimpanzees, scientists from the Humboldt Research Group of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen now showed that communicative exchanges of our closest living relatives, the great apes resemble cooperative turn-taking sequences in human conversation.

Human communication is one of the most sophisticated signalling systems, being highly cooperative and including fast interactions. The first step into this collective endeavour can already be observed in early infancy, well before the use of first words, when children start to engage in turn-taking interactional practices embodying gestures to communicate with other individuals. One of the predominant theories of language evolution thus suggested that the first fundamental steps towards human communication were gestures alone.

The research team of Marlen Fröhlich and Simone Pika of the Humboldt Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology together with colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, the Ludwig- Maximilians-University in Munich and the Kyoto University in Japan, conducted the first systematic comparison of communicative interactions in mother-infant dyads of two different bonobo and two different chimpanzee communities in their natural environments.

The bonobos were studied over the duration of two years in the Salonga National Park and Luo Scientific Reserve in the Democratic Rebublic of Congo. The chimpanzees were observed in the Taï National Park, Côte D'Ivoire, and Kibale National Park in Uganda.

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Orangutans taught how to order their lunch on iPads - video

Orangutans are being taught to communicate with zoo keepers at a Miami Zoo using iPads.

Linda Jacobs, who is a keeper at Jungle Island Zoo, wants the apes to use apps to tell keepers what they want to eat.

Jacobs said: "They have all the intelligence they need to communicate with us.

"But what they don't have is developed vocal chords and voiceboxes. This gives them a voice."

Watch the video below to see the orangutans using the iPads:


Continued and video:  http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/odd/news/a392065/orangutans-taught-how-to-order-their-lunch-on-ipads-video.html

Looking for the Next American Hyrax? Audience-Loving Animals Express Multiple Traits Through Their Songs

ScienceDaily (June 28, 2012) — If popular karaoke bars and the long audition lines for American Idol demonstrate anything, it's that people like to express themselves through song -- and the bigger the audience, the better. Now researchers at Tel Aviv University have found the same trait in small, rodent-like mammals called hyraxes, indigenous to Africa and the Middle East.

According to Prof. Eli Geffen and PhD candidate Amiyaal Ilany of TAU's Department of Zoology, hyrax vocalizations or "songs" go a long way towards communicating the singer's unique identity. Each one has unique songs that communicate a variety of information such as the singer's age, social rank, hormone levels, and size. And preliminary data suggests that the hyraxes prefer to sing when they have a more alert audience, taking the opportunity to promote themselves.

Understanding the function of the hyrax song will shed new light on animal communications, says Prof. Geffen, who notes that while birds are well known in the animal kingdom for singing, more complex vocalizations are rare in mammals. It's a model for learning how animals emit and receive signals, and what they understand from these communication channels, adds Ilany.

Continued: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120628145731.htm

Noisy Environments Make Young Songbirds Shuffle Their Tunes: Baby Songbirds Shape Their Species' Playlist

ScienceDaily (June 19, 2012) — iPod owners aren't the only ones who frequently shuffle their favorite tunes. Baby songbirds do it, too, a new study shows.

A baby songbird prefers to learn the clearest versions of songs he hears and uses them to build his personal playlist for life. As a result, noise, from nature and humans, influences which songs a bird learns to sing and can create lasting changes to his species' top tunes, the study's results suggest.

"There's been an enormous amount of interest in how anthropogenic factors affect the channels animals use for communication and in particular how human noise affects birdsong," said Duke biologist and study co-author Steve Nowicki. "As far as we know, this is the first study that can link noise to cultural evolution of bird song."

The team designed the study to test a 30-year-old hypothesis suggesting that young birds memorize and later sing the clearest songs they hear during their critical learning period. In the experiment, Nowicki and his collaborators collected nine male, swamp-sparrow nestlings and hand-raised them in a soundproof room.


Read on:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120619225943.htm

Gorilla communication: mums use 'baby talk' gestures

Mother gorillas use a type of "baby talk" when communicating with infants, according to scientists.

The team studied captive western lowland gorillas, watching and filming the animals as they interacted.

These animals have a wide repertoire of communication gestures, so the team focused on facial expressions and hand signals used in play.

They published their findings in the American journal of Primatology.

Eva Maria Luef from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, led the research.

She and her colleague Katja Liebal filmed 120 hours of footage of the gorillas at Leipzig Zoo and Howletts and Port Lympne Wild Animal Parks in the UK.

Continued:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/18393314

Dolphins' Unique Whistles Say, 'Hey! Come Play!'

When meeting strangers in the wild, dolphins whistle signature tunes that may be the animal equivalent of "Hello, my name is…" stickers.

These signature whistles have been observed in captive dolphins for decades, but new research is the first to reveal how these sea mammals use the sounds when one pod meets another in the ocean. 

"It's not just 'I'm so-and-so,' but the other information also in that whistle is, 'I'm so-and-so, and I'm interested in making contact in a friendly way, I'm not attacking,'" said study researcher Vincent Janik, an expert in animal communication at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

Janik and his colleagues used special arrays of underwater microphones to follow bottlenose dolphin pods in St. Andrews Bay as they swam around and interacted with other groups of dolphins. They used a statistical method to tease out patterns in signature whistles (those whistles that dolphins develop as their personalized calling card) and differentiate those noises from the other chirps and squeaks dolphins produce.

Read on:  http://www.livescience.com/18711-dolphin-signature-whistles.html

Head Butts & Waggle Dances: How Honeybees Make Decisions

Honeybees choose new nest sites by essentially head-butting each other into a consensus, shows a new study.

When scout bees find a new potential home, they do a waggle dance to broadcast to other scout bees where the nest is and how suitable it is for the swarm. The nest with the most support in the end becomes the swarm’s new home.

But new research shows another layer of complexity to the decision-making process: The bees deliver "stop signals" via head butts to scouts favoring a different site. With enough head butts, a scout bee will stop its dance, decreasing the apparent support for that particular nest.

This process of excitation (waggle dances) and inhibition (head butts) in the bee swarm parallels how a complex brain makes decisions using neurons, the researchers say.


Read more here ...

Turtles 'communicate with each other before hatching'

Scientists believe baby turtles can communicate with each other before they hatch and can arrange to emerge from their eggs at the same time.

A study of Australia's Murray short-necked turtle found the embryos synchronised their hatching to prevent smaller turtles emerging alone and being attacked by predators such as goannas and foxes.

It is believed the unhatched turtles, which lie enclosed in a tight nest, may be able to sense each other's heart vibrations or may detect gases emitted from the breath of other turtles. In this way, more developed turtles can send signals on their growth status to less developed ones to encourage them to increase their growth rates.

"I am pretty sure they're not sitting there chatting to each other but no one really knows," said Dr Ricky Spencer, a co-author of the new study.

The researchers, from the University of Western Study, said that embryos positioned at the bottom of the nest – where temperatures are lower – have a "catch-up mechanism" which enables them to overcome their longer incubation periods. However, the precise nature of the mechanism remains unknown.

"They might be cueing in on heart rates," Dr Spencer told ABC Radio. "They are all touching each other within the nests so there might be vibrations there. A nest environment is pretty much an enclosed cavity where gas exchange might be a cue as well ... They breathe, so if you get increases in carbon dioxide within a nest they might be cueing on in that."

The researchers studied the turtles by dividing a clutch of eggs into two and incubating them at different temperature levels. They then united the eggs after a week and analysed the embryonic heart rates and metabolic rates. During the last third of the incubation period, the cooler embryos had sped up their heart rate and metabolism and hatched within a couple of days of the warmer ones.

"They increased their developmental rate essentially independent of temperature [and] that allowed them to hatch earlier," Dr Spencer said.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/8925107/Turtles-communicate-with-each-other-before-hatching.html

Meerkats recognise others' voices

Meerkats recognise another member of their social group by the sound of their voice, according to scientists.

Researchers studying the animals in the Kalahari Desert, South Africa, played recordings of meerkat calls and observed the animals' reactions.

Their discovery, reported in the journal Biology Letters is the first evidence of a non-primate mammal showing vocal recognition in the wild.

The phenomenon could be more widespread in the animal kingdom than thought.

"There's lots of evidence of vocal recognition in primates," explained lead researcher Dr Simon Townsend from the University of Zurich in Switzerland.

"[In primates] you can really test whether they respond to individual vocal recognition."

But this harder to test in other non-primates, he explained, because relationships between individual animals are not as clear.

In meerkats, for example - although they are social animals that live in groups and forage and even raise young together - it is not entirely clear how one animal will respond to another when it hears its call.

To solve this problem, the researchers used a simple audio playback experiment.

They used recordings of the staccato "close calls" that meerkats make continually while they are foraging. "We think the calls mainly function to keep the group together," said Dr Townsend. "But they also tell other individuals, 'I'm here, this is my patch'."

The scientists placed speakers on either side of a foraging meerkat, and played a call from a member of their social group. A few seconds later they played the call of a different member of the same group through a speaker on the opposite side.

Read on...

Piranhas communicate with sound, say researchers

Despite a nasty reputation, piranhas seem to bark more often than bite.

Scientists have discovered that the fearsome fish use sounds to communicate - often intimidating their rivals rather than attacking.

With underwater microphones, scientists recorded the sounds the fish made when they confronted one another.
They reported in the Journal of Experimental Biology that each of these three sounds appeared to contain a different "message".

Lead researcher Eric Parmentier, from the University of Liege, Belgium, has studied sound production and communication in a wide variety of fish species, including the charismatic clownfish and the spectacularly ugly toad fish.

He already knew that piranhas made sounds, but wanted to understand why.

Many fish use noises to attract a mate, so the sounds are an important indicator that the fish are reproducing.

"Eventually, if we understand the behaviour that's associated with the sounds, we might be able to listen to the sea and explain to fishermen: 'Now's not the best time to start fishing'."

Dr Parmentier and his colleagues put a hydrophone - an underwater microphone - into a tank of piranhas in their lab and filmed the fish as they interacted.

They recorded three distinct sounds. The first was a bark that the fish produced when they "displayed" to each other - confronting one another face to face but not fighting.
Read on...