Cross-species effect of separation calls: family dogs’ reactions to pup, baby, kitten and artificial sounds

Lehoczki, Fanni; Szenczi, Péter; Bánszegi, Oxana; Lakatos, Krisztina; Faragó, Tamás

doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2020.08.015

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…We found a strong effect of receiver sex on responsiveness, as female dogs paid more attention to the playback and responded faster than male dogs across all stimuli. This contrasts with previous results that showed male and female dogs were equally responsive to distress cries 44 , 47 . However, our results fit with the fact that male dogs invest less parental care in their offspring 62 than females do, thus females might be under stronger selective pressures to respond quickly to distress cries.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 99%

“…We predict that, overall, dogs are more likely to respond to puppy than to human baby calls. Moreover based on prior observations 38 , 44 , 47 , we do not expect to find differences between male and female dogs when responding to human baby cries, but to find such differences when responding to puppy cries. We also predict that, as seen in other species 1 , 24 , the frequency range (conspecific vs. heterospecific) of the calls should influence dogs’ responses independent of call origin (conspecific vs. heterospecific), with dogs giving stronger responses to conspecific and heterospecific calls modified to align the fundamental frequency range with conspecific values.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 77%

“…In fact when dogs hear baby cries, they are known to show increased levels of cortisol and to show submissive behaviours: they put their ears flat and back, lower the tail, head, and body, all characteristics of an aversive response 39 . Interestingly, despite differences in parental investment, the dogs’ sex does not affect their level of attention to cries from either puppies or human babies 44 , 47 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

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Effect of pitch range on dogs’ response to conspecific vs. heterospecific distress cries

Root‐Gutteridge

Ratcliffe

Neumann

et al. 2021

Sci Rep

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Distress cries are emitted by many mammal species to elicit caregiving attention. Across taxa, these calls tend to share similar acoustic structures, but not necessarily frequency range, raising the question of their interspecific communicative potential. As domestic dogs are highly responsive to human emotional cues and experience stress when hearing human cries, we explore whether their responses to distress cries from human infants and puppies depend upon sharing conspecific frequency range or species-specific call characteristics. We recorded adult dogs’ responses to distress cries from puppies and human babies, emitted from a loudspeaker in a basket. The frequency of the cries was presented in both their natural range and also shifted to match the other species. Crucially, regardless of species origin, calls falling into the dog call-frequency range elicited more attention. Thus, domestic dogs’ responses depended strongly on the frequency range. Females responded both faster and more strongly than males, potentially reflecting asymmetries in parental care investment. Our results suggest that, despite domestication leading to an increased overall responsiveness to human cues, dogs still respond considerably less to calls in the natural human infant range than puppy range. Dogs appear to use a fast but inaccurate decision-making process to determine their response to distress-like vocalisations.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 77%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Effect of pitch range on dogs’ response to conspecific vs. heterospecific distress cries

Root‐Gutteridge

Ratcliffe

Neumann

et al. 2021

Sci Rep

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…We note that dogs do make use of both dF and HNR cues in conspecific vocalizations. For example, dogs can use dF in growls of conspecifics as cues for size (Faragó et al 2010;Taylor et al 2011), and noisier puppy calls lead to faster orientation to the vocalizer (Lehoczki et al 2020). Acoustic analysis suggests that HNR contributes to acoustic discriminability of canine voice identities (Larrañaga et al 2014).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The acoustic bases of human voice identity processing in dogs

et al. 2022

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Speech carries identity-diagnostic acoustic cues that help individuals recognize each other during vocal–social interactions. In humans, fundamental frequency, formant dispersion and harmonics-to-noise ratio serve as characteristics along which speakers can be reliably separated. The ability to infer a speaker’s identity is also adaptive for members of other species (like companion animals) for whom humans (as owners) are relevant. The acoustic bases of speaker recognition in non-humans are unknown. Here, we tested whether dogs can recognize their owner’s voice and whether they rely on the same acoustic parameters for such recognition as humans use to discriminate speakers. Stimuli were pre-recorded sentences spoken by the owner and control persons, played through loudspeakers placed behind two non-transparent screens (with each screen hiding a person). We investigated the association between acoustic distance of speakers (examined along several dimensions relevant in intraspecific voice identification) and dogs’ behavior. Dogs chose their owner’s voice more often than that of control persons’, suggesting that they can identify it. Choosing success and time spent looking in the direction of the owner’s voice were positively associated, showing that looking time is an index of the ease of choice. Acoustic distance of speakers in mean fundamental frequency and jitter were positively associated with looking time, indicating that the shorter the acoustic distance between speakers with regard to these parameters, the harder the decision. So, dogs use these cues to discriminate their owner’s voice from unfamiliar voices. These findings reveal that dogs use some but probably not all acoustic parameters that humans use to identify speakers. Although dogs can detect fine changes in speech, their perceptual system may not be fully attuned to identity-diagnostic cues in the human voice.

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Meowing dogs: can dogs recognize cats in a cross-modal violation of expectancy task (Canis familiaris)?

et al. 2023

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Dogs can recognize conspecifics in cross-modal audio–video presentations. In this paper, we aimed at exploring if such capability extends to the recognition of cats, and whether it is influenced by exposure to these animals. To reach our aim, we enrolled 64 pet dogs. Half of the dogs were currently living with cats, while the rest had never been living with cats, nor were at the time of the experiment. All dogs underwent a cross-modal violation of expectancy experiment, where they were presented with either a cat or a dog vocalization, followed by a video of either species on a blank background. The result revealed that dogs did not exhibit a surprise reaction towards the incoherent stimuli of a cat vocalization and a dog video or vice-versa, implying that they had not recognized the stimuli portraying cats. The pattern of results did not differ between dogs living or not with cats, implying that exposure to a limited number of cats, however, prolonged, is not sufficient to grant dogs with the ability to recognize them on audio–video presentations. We propose that the lack of recognition could be due to the small number of individual cats the dogs are regularly exposed to, or to the possible lack of early exposure to cats during the socialization phase.

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Cross-species effect of separation calls: family dogs’ reactions to pup, baby, kitten and artificial sounds

Cited by 4 publications

References 55 publications

Effect of pitch range on dogs’ response to conspecific vs. heterospecific distress cries

Effect of pitch range on dogs’ response to conspecific vs. heterospecific distress cries

The acoustic bases of human voice identity processing in dogs

Meowing dogs: can dogs recognize cats in a cross-modal violation of expectancy task (Canis familiaris)?

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