What the hyena's laugh tells: Sex, age, dominance and individual signature in the giggling call of Crocuta crocuta

Abstract

BackgroundAmong mammals living in social groups, individuals form communication networks where they signal their identity and social status, facilitating social interaction. In spite of its importance for understanding of mammalian societies, the coding of individual-related information in the vocal signals of non-primate mammals has been relatively neglected. The present study focuses on the spotted hyena Crocuta crocuta, a social carnivore known for its complex female-dominated society. We investigate if and how the well-known hyena's laugh, also known as the giggle call, encodes information about the emitter.ResultsBy analyzing acoustic structure in both temporal and frequency domains, we show that the hyena's laugh can encode information about age, individual identity and dominant/subordinate status, providing cues to receivers that could enable assessment of the social position of an emitting individual.ConclusionsThe range of messages encoded in the hyena's laugh is likely to play a role during social interactions. This call, together with other vocalizations and other sensory channels, should ensure an array of communication signals that support the complex social system of the spotted hyena. Experimental studies are now needed to decipher precisely the communication network of this species.

Optimizing the Search for Resources by Sharing Information: Mongolian Gazelles as a Case Study

“…We explore the dependence of this metric on the communication length, γ −1 , or equivalently the frequency, ν (Figure 2). Similarly to other species, such as lions [15] or hyenas [16], the optimal foraging time (41 hours) is obtained for γ −1 of the order of kilometers (around 6 km). This result cannot currently be checked with data.…”

“…Such strategies may, however, also have important incidental benefits. For example, an individual that has found a good foraging patch might try to attract conspecifics to reduce its risk of predation, but also provides its conspecifics with information on the location of good forage, thus increasing the foraging efficiency of those responding to the call.A variety of mammalian species are known to communicate acoustically over distances of up to several kilometers [3,15,16], but while group formation via vocalizations has been well studied [3,17,18], incidental benefits such as increased foraging efficiency have received little research attention. In contrast, research on foraging efficiency has focused largely on independent individuals [19][20][21][22][23][24][25], or on comparing foraging behavior across species [26].…”

Isolation calls of the bat Saccopteryx bilineata encode multiple messages

“…As a receiver, information about signaller age could be useful in different social interactions such as during agonistic encounters, for mate choice, or during predator encounters where signaller reliability is crucial for a receiver's response (Blumstein & Daniel, 2004;Blumstein & Munos, 2005;Charlton et al, 2009;Erb et al, 2013;Ey et al, 2007;Fischer et al, 2004;Mathevon, Koralek, Weldele, Glickman, & Theunissen, 2010;Reby & McComb, 2003). In S. bilineata, pup age might be useful for females to adequately allocate maternal care.…”

Kin Signatures Learned in the Egg? Red-Backed Fairy-Wren Songs Are Similar to Their Mother's In-Nest Calls and Songs

“…In our case, a young bird's song may differ from its mother's vocalizations because it has changed over time, even though the bird learned the song from its mother originally. This may be expected if the vocalization converges on a group signature (Radford, 2005), if it encodes local dialect (Nelson and Poesel, 2007), and/or if other information influences vocalization structure (such as dominance status, Mathevon et al, 2010). Another potential explanation could be that young bird's songs differ from their mothers' because they learn vocal elements from multiple tutors.…”