Animal Communication Flashcards
(17 cards)
Why do animals make warnings?
Evans and Marler = chickens make diff calls to warn others of predators
BUT
is this due to fear rather than care for the others? (Kean et al = capuchins more likely to make false warnings also had higher anxiety levels)
who gives alarm calls
Sherman = only female squirrels gave out a warning cry on seeing a predator - they are more surrounded by their relatives than males as men disperse to other areas to increase genetic variation in colonies
consequence of calls
Sherman = more likely to be killed if they call
different vocal responses to danger
loud alarm barks/screams after deadly ambush threat
quiet alert ‘hoos’ ie for vipers where quiet avoidance
Crockford, Wittig, Mundry and Zuberbuhler
2012
Naturalistic experiment with wild chimpanzees
stuffed viper placed in pathway in Budongo Forest of Uganda
subjects = all animals
detectors = saw the snake
receivers = chimp within 50m so heard call
Chimpanzees that saw the receiver see the snake or had seen snake earlier in day = fully knowledgeable receiver
Chimpanzees that heard call without seeing receiver see snake or heard hoo earlier in day = partially knowledgeable receiver
Chimpanzees that didn’t hear call or see snake = ignorant receiver
Chimpanzee that saw snake and called out = detectors
Detectors gave more calls to ignorant receivers, perceived risk to detector didn’t impact if the call was made
chimps only called when they went back for a second look
Dissociation between emotional reaction and vocalisation
Meaning = alarm calls are moderated by how it benefits receiver
chimps almost think before they speak
Clutton-Brook et al
1979
Roaring Red Deer - male red deer roar the longest/loudest to ward off competitors from their territory
best way to defend territory is showing your strength but actually fighting can cause damage so need signal to show strength
Male Red Deer roar to ward off competitors - strongest animal = longest and loudest roar
Wilkinson and Dodson
1997
flies compare length of eye stalks or antlers to gain territory
alcicornis flies’ antler width was correlated with size of body so was good indicator of strength
Animal accents
White-crowned sparrows from Marin, Berkley and Sunset Beach California have diff accents - shows they are from around here so warns predators off
Falls 1988 = less intruders when song of removed birds was played
Deception
Baptista and Petrinovich 1986 = birds exposed to other male birds songs learn their song
Deane 1944 = ground-nesting birds such as killdeer plover feign injury dragging one wing along ground to lure predators away from their young
Lloyd 1975 = Photuris females fireflies imitate female signals of Photunis fireflies to attract males they then eat
Mitchell and Anderson = capuchin monkeys point, withhold info and deceive
Churchill, Coluche and Boy = videotaped 3 monkeys shown bait put under bowl twice then trainer approached trying to figure out which bowl bait was under - reliability coder unaware of experiment’s purpose identified what happened - in cooperative condition, monkey praised if they select one with bait or they express regret and leave if not - in competitive condition, competitor wears diff clothes and dresses distinctively so it’s salient to monkey. if monkey chooses bowl with bait, competitor pretends to eat bait and shout ‘mine, mine, mine!’ and if not, competitor leaves and another trainer approaches to praise monkey and gives them the bait
in last 6 cooperative trials, all capuchins pointed to bowl with food and in last 6 competitive trials, Boy pointed to food, Churchill withheld pointing and Coluche pointed to no-food bowl demonstrating deception - after session 31 the times Coluche pointed at food box decreased, surely if it was deception he would have learned to switch pointing faster
So was it deception or just discrimination learning? ie if green light (similar monkey) show perform behaviour AND if red light (competition monkey) shows perform another behaviour (not outwitting, just learning appropriate behaviour in that circumstance) - third-level deception as result of learned association
Levels of deception
first = appearance-related ie the owl butterfly
second = stimulus-response process (plover feigning broken wing to distract predator)
third = result of learned association (this was Coluche)
fourth = intentionally try create false belief in another’s mind ie Mitchell and Anderson
Canteloup, Poitrasson, Anderson, Poulin and Meunier
2017
Two macaques (1 dominant and 1 subordinate) released into arena with 1 banana - if banana was hidden where only subordinate could see, dominant still took banana off them - subordinate tricked dominant into searching for banana in wrong place
Deceptive behaviours:
1. concealment by inhibiting interest in object (CIO) = avoid looking at banana
2. distraction by leading (DL) = subordinate moved away from food and dominant followed
Results:
1. macaques appears to use deceptive behaviours to keep food - 4th level deception? or is subordinate just trying to avoid conflict by not approaching competitor (level 3?)
Are most animal signals honest?
yes
roar of red deer depends on lung capacity which is correlated to size
number of lizard press-ups correlated to amount they can run
length of eye stalk correlated with thorax which relates to strength of fly
what do animals communicate?
warnings of predators
demonstrations of strength
signals attractiveness
rules of language
Hockett (1960) = all languages have arbitrariness (language shouldn’t sound like what they convey ie dog cowering fails this), displacement (language must give you info about things that aren’t in your immediate area), semanticity (signals must have meaning), productivity (using same units in diff orders to create many diff sentences)
displacement studies
Riley et al 2005 = bee came home and did waggle dance telling others food was to the left - receiving bees flew out to find food and went to left even if they should have headed back and turned right - honey bees show displacement, semantics and arbitrariness, but not productivity
Primack shows Ape called Sarah learned what colour of brown was by learning it’s relationship to chocolate but in absence of chocolate, Sarah told Brown is colour of chocolate, Sarah could point to brown disk
semanticity studies
Pilly and Reid = Chaser the collie can recognise 1000 toy names and retrieve toy on command - can also learn verbs like paw or nose - can classify toys and non-toys she wasn’t allowed to play with
Case studies of language in primates
Hayes and his wife tried teaching chimpanzees to speak, learning only 3 human words by 3 years old as chimpanzees don’t have structure in brain to talk, large number of receptors in tongue
Gardner and Gardner 1969 = are humans the only animals with capacity for language? - taught chimpanzees sign language - Washoe arrived in lab around 10 months old - taught ASL signs for ‘more’, ‘cup’, ‘open’, ‘hurry’, ‘where’ etc - constant human company, 16 months daily recordings - 132 signs learnt in 5 years - signs generalised to other contexts - sign combinations and word strings used - ‘water bird’ made for swan, ‘drink fruit’ for water melon - 2 year old child learns as 10 words per day speed so much faster than chimpanzee
Herb Terrace 1979 = re-analysed videos of Washoe signing and found unintentional cueing by trainer - in 1978 Gardner and Gardner retested Washoe when trainer didn’t know answer and chimp gave correct answer 82 out of 128 times - Terrace however, suggested Primates performed rote memorisation tasks, it’s just learning a response
Terrace 1979 then taught ‘Nim Chimsky’ to use ASL - 19,000 utterances analysed for lexical regularities - findings cast doubt on the linguistic nature of primate signing - used signs for ‘angry’ and ‘bite’ to express displeasure AND incapable of combining words to create novel ideas AND combinations of signs were imitations of trainers - longest utterance was ‘give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me you’ - regularities couldn’t be attributed to grammatical rules - Nim’s utterances were prompted by teacher’s prior utterances and Nim interrupted his teachers to a much larger extent than a child interrupts an adult’s speech
Sue Savage-Rumbaugh 1983 = learning symbols, word comprehension, decoding syntactical structures - Bonobos used lexigrams on a computer-based keyboard to communicate answers, desires and observations - teacher said word and bonobos could press the corresponding sign on the computer-based keyboard - only 2% utterances are immediate imitations of researchers - exposed bonobos to similar language environment to children (spoken English and lexigrams) and post-training, were asked to respond to 660 novel sentences - in blind-trials, some sentences were broken down into parts ie “get the paper…put the paper into the backpack”, and 29 sentences used - bonobos were able to do this 72% of all trials, demonstrated understanding of word order through actions so their linguistic capabilities may be underestimated
BUT apparent understanding ie “put coke in fridge” may only be achieved because “put fridge in coke” isn’t possible - 50% of sentences were unambiguous and when only ambiguous commands were scored, only 30% correct
