Context‐Related Variation in the Vocal Growling Behaviour of the Domestic Dog (Canis familiaris)

Abstract

We investigated whether the growls of domestic dogs, Canis familiaris, exhibit predictable variations in a range of key acoustic parameters when they are given in two contrasting experimental contexts, and whether humans are sensitive to such variation. In a standardized experimental paradigm, an experimenter visited 32 domestic dogs and generated an aggression context and a play context. In these contexts, 204 isolated growls were recorded and subsequently acoustically analysed. Contrary to previous findings on barks, fundamental and formant frequencies of growls did not vary between the two contexts. However, growls from the aggression context were significantly longer than growls from the play context. Additionally, the temporal structure of the vocal sequences containing growls differed significantly between the contexts. In a series of psychoacoustic experiments, human listeners were not able to discriminate between growls recorded in the two contexts, however both aggressiveness and playfulness ratings were strongly influenced by dog weight, with larger dogs being perceived as more aggressive than smaller dogs. However, participants were able to attribute aggressiveness and playfulness to synthesized sequences in which growls occurred at a two rates, typical of either the aggression or the play context. We conclude that context‐related variation in growling behaviour resides in the temporal structure, rather than in the acoustic composition of isolated growls, and furthermore that human listeners are able to attribute context on the basis of growling rate. In addition, human appear to have an intuitive acoustic bias toward perceiving larger dogs as more aggressive.

Emotions in goats: mapping physiological, behavioural and vocal profiles

“…A decrease in F0range from negative to positive situations has also been observed in humans (Hammerschmidt & Jürgens, 2007) and elephants, Loxodonta africana (Soltis et al, 2011). Similarly, lower variation in F0 (cumulative variation of F0) in positive than in negative situation has been found in dogs (Taylor, Reby, & McComb, 2009). During positive emotions, it thus seems that vocal folds vibrate at a more stable rate than in negative emotions, resulting in more stable F0 over time.…”

Encoding of Situations in the Vocal Repertoire of Piglets (Sus scrofa): A Comparison of Discrete and Graded Classifications

“…Thus in addition to describing the vocal emissions, it is also important to take into account the situation and determine if this vocal expression is situation-typical. This has often been described qualitatively [6], [10] but rarely quantitatively. We may expect that there can be similarities in vocal expressions in different situations when the emotional state is close and dissimilarities in vocal expressions between situations which are different [11], [12].…”

Comparing supervised learning methods for classifying sex, age, context and individual Mudi dogs from barking

“…The ethological analysis of the possible functions of canine vocalizations has so far provided data about the individual-specific content of wolf howls (Mazzini et al 2013;Root-Gutteridge et al 2013), the indexical content of dog growls, related to the caller's body size (Taylor et al 2008(Taylor et al , 2010Farago´ et al 2010a;Ba´lint et al 2013), and the context-specific content of dog growls (Farago´ et al 2010b;Taylor et al 2009). However, even though barking is considered to be the most characteristic form of dog vocalization, exceeding the barks of wolves and coyotes both in its frequency of occurrence and variability (Cohen and Fox 1976), the functional aspects of dog barks are surprisingly little known.…”