Internal acoustic structuring in pied babbler recruitment cries specifies the form of recruitment

Sabrina Engesser, Amanda R Ridley, Marta B Manser, Andri Manser and Simon W Townsend

Behavioral Ecology, 2018, vol. 29, issue 5, 1021-1030

Abstract: Recent work suggests that animals combine sounds in meaning-generating ways. Adding to this body of data, we demonstrate that pied babblers produce 2 variants of a stereotyped structure when recruiting group members during group travel, with internal acoustic variation refining the signal’s meaning, specifying whether receivers should approach or follow the caller (i.e. come to/with me). Ultimately, examples of combinatorial mechanisms in nonhuman vocal systems can provide insights into the evolution of human language’s combinatorial system.

Keywords: animal communication; acoustic modifier; combinatoriality; language evolution; Turdoides bicolor; recruitment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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