Responses to leopards are independent of experience in Guereza colobus monkeys

Schel, Anne Marijke; Zuberbühler, Klaus

doi:10.1163/000579509x12483520922007

Cited by 26 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 61 publications

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“…Significant differences in latency to respond for each playback stimulus are indicated in bold alarm-calling behaviour is completely 'hardwired' and unaffected by ontogenetic experience (Schel and Zuberbühler 2009). However, the factors that impact on monkeys' alarm calling behaviour might be relatively complex, as indicated by different responses to eagle shrieks in the present study.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 55%

Predation affects alarm call usage in female Diana monkeys (Cercopithecus diana diana)

Stephan

Zuberbühler

2013

Behav Ecol Sociobiol

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Diana monkeys produce acoustically distinct calls to a number of external events, including different types of predators. In a previous study, we found population-wide differences in male alarm call production in Taï Forest, Ivory Coast, and on Tiwai Island, Sierra Leone, mostly likely originating from differences in predator experience. In Taï Forest, leopards (Panthera pardus) are common but on Tiwai Island they have been absent for decades, while the predation pressure from crowned eagles (Stephanoaetus coronatus) has been similar. To further evaluate the impact of predator experience, we here analyse the vocal behaviour of female Diana monkeys in both habitats. Female Diana monkeys produce predatorspecific alarm calls, alert calls and contact calls in response to predators, suggesting that their calls serve in a broader range of functions compared to males. Results showed that females produced the same call types at both sites, despite the differences in predator fauna. Regarding call usage, leopard alarm calls were extremely rare on Tiwai Island, but not in Taï Forest, whereas we found no differences in eagle alarm call production. When comparing response latencies, Tiwai females were slower to respond to both predators compared to Taï females. Finally, we found no habitat-specific acoustic differences in the alert and predator-specific alarm calls, but significant differences in frequency-based parameters of contact calls. Overall, our results suggest that ontogenetic experience can affect primate vocal behaviour in both usage and acoustic structure but that the way in which particular call types are affected may be closely linked to function.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 55%

Predation affects alarm call usage in female Diana monkeys (Cercopithecus diana diana)

Stephan

Zuberbühler

2013

Behav Ecol Sociobiol

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“…These were listed as 'almost certain' or 'suspected' depending on the injuries sustained and behavior of other individuals in the vicinity. Leopards (Panthera pardus) are absent from the study area (Schel and Zuberbühler 2009) and crownedhawk eagles (Stephanoaetus coronatus), despite killing monkey prey of up to ~ 11 kg, appear not to prey on chimpanzee infants (Sanders et al 2003). Predation pressure is therefore low in the Sonso community and injuries that are not consistent with a fall (e.g., limbs or scalp torn off) are likely to be inflicted by conspecifics.…”

Section: Calculating Frequency Of Intra-community Infanticidementioning

confidence: 99%

Intra-community infanticide in wild, eastern chimpanzees: a 24-year review

Lowe

Hobaiter

Asiimwe³

et al. 2019

Primates

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Infanticide is well documented in chimpanzees and various hypotheses have been proposed to explain this behavior. However, since infanticide by chimpanzees is relatively rare, it has thus far not been possible to thoroughly test these hypotheses. Here we present an analysis of the largest dataset of infanticides from a single community of chimpanzees, a full record of all intracommunity infanticides and failed attempts at infanticide over a 24-year period for the Sonso community of chimpanzees in the Budongo Forest, Uganda. We use these data to test four hypotheses for this behavior: the sexual selection hypothesis, male mating competition, resource competition, and meat acquisition. Our dataset consisted of 33 attacks on 30 victims, 11 of which were 'definite' infanticides, four of which 'almost certain', and nine were 'suspected', while nine were 'attempted' infanticides. The majority of attacks where the perpetrators were known (23) had only male attackers and victims were disproportionately young (two-thirds of victims with known ages were under 1 week old). Our data best support the sexual selection hypothesis for infanticide. Cannibalism was infrequent and partial, suggesting meat acquisition was a by-product of infanticide, and there was no evidence to suggest that infanticide was part of a male strategy to eliminate future competitors. Infanticide by females was rare, but we suggest sexual selection, operating through intra-sexual competition, may also be responsible for infanticide by females.

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“…This is particularly important when such variables are naturally associated with each other. For example, if we play back an alarm call and the targeted monkey reacts, we can infer that it is only the sound that it reacted to and not the smell or the body language of the animal that emitted the call . In other words, when multiple sensory stimuli are always experienced simultaneously by the receiver in a natural situation, an experiment is the only way to infer what information the receiver acts on.…”

Section: How To Study Animal Cognition?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Since other things rarely are equal, a balanced experimental design is required. The difference between experimental and control conditions, such as the vegetation density during a playback of an alarm call in a tropical forest, may not always be easy to measure. To better account for such a confounding variables (e.g., a vegetation type that facilitates a predator's attack), we should balance the order and number of control and experimental trials.…”

Section: How To Study Animal Cognition?mentioning

confidence: 99%

What animals do not do or fail to find: A novel observational approach for studying cognition in the wild

Janmaat

2019

Evolutionary Anthropology

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To understand how our brain evolved and what it is for, we are in urgent need of knowledge about the cognitive skills of a large variety of animal species and individuals, and their relationships to rapidly disappearing social and ecological conditions. But how do we obtain this knowledge? Studying cognition in the wild is a challenge. Field researchers (and their study subjects) face many factors that can easily interfere with their variables of interest. Although field studies of cognition present unique challenges, they are still invaluable for understanding the evolutionary drivers of cognition. In this review, I discuss the advantages and urgency of field‐based studies on animal cognition and introduce a novel observational approach for field research that is guided by three questions: (a) what do animals fail to find?, (b) what do they not do?, and (c) what do they only do when certain conditions are met? My goal is to provide guidance to future field researchers examining primate cognition.

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Responses to leopards are independent of experience in Guereza colobus monkeys

Cited by 26 publications

References 61 publications

Predation affects alarm call usage in female Diana monkeys (Cercopithecus diana diana)

Predation affects alarm call usage in female Diana monkeys (Cercopithecus diana diana)

Intra-community infanticide in wild, eastern chimpanzees: a 24-year review

What animals do not do or fail to find: A novel observational approach for studying cognition in the wild

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