What Land Mammal Is Thought To Have The Most Sophisticated Animal Language?

(PhysOrg.com) -- Prairie dogs may have a vocal advice arrangement more circuitous than that of dolphins, whales and non-human being primates, according to a new report.

Gunnison's prairie dog (Cynomys gunnisoni), as well known as the Zuni prairie dog, is actually a rodent belonging to the ground squirrel family, but like the other four prairie dog species (Utah, white-tailed, black-tailed, and Mexican) information technology gained its proper noun considering of its bark-like telephone call. It lives in semi-desert grasslands and prairies in northern New Mexico and Arizona and southern Utah and Colorado, where it lives in colonies of hundreds of animals.

Professor Con Slobodchikoff, from the Northern Arizona University, has been studying and recording the calls of the Gunnison'due south prairie dog for three decades. The calls contain varying numbers of frequency modulations, barks, squeals and squeaks, and each animal has unique tonal qualities. The same "words" tin be understood by all the members of the colony. Slobodchikoff believes they may take evolved a complex language because they have a circuitous social structure and live in large colonies in vast and complicated burrow systems.

Slobodchikoff says with a single call prairie dogs can warn others of the blazon of predator, its management, and even its color, and believes they are able to include this much information in a single call by varying the modulation and harmonics in the phone call.

Slobodchikoff and colleagues recorded the sounds made by the animals in response to coyotes, badgers and hawks. They also fabricated observations of their behavior in the presence of each predator, and found that for instance they react to coyotes past retreating to their burrows and continuing up to avert surprise assault, while they respond to badgers by lying low to avoid ascertainment.

The scientists later played back the recordings to other groups of prairie dogs to examination their response. In each case the rodents responded to the playbacks in the same manner they respond to the predator, showing that each call was understood to mean a different predator.

Professor Slobodchikoff describes his vocal experiments in a BBC natural history TV program called Prairie dogs, talk of the town. Prairie dog numbers have plummeted in recent decades as ranchers view them as pests competing with livestock for resources. They are increasingly endangered fifty-fifty though they are a keystone species providing food for a wide range of predators, aerating the soil, adding organic affair and increasing water penetration, and creating habitat for other animals when they abandon their burrows.

More information: BBC article

Citation: Prairie dogs may accept the nigh circuitous language (2010, Feb 4) retrieved viii June 2022 from https://phys.org/news/2010-02-prairie-dogs-complex-linguistic communication.html

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