Animal Communication Flashcards

1
Q

When does an animal actually communicate with another animal?

A

When A’s behavior manipulates B’s sense organs in such a way that B’s behavior changes

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2
Q

Primary functions of animal communication

A
  • Regulating social interaction (often by expressive attitudes toward social partners)
  • Giving information (e.g. location of food sources, predators, nest sites)
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3
Q

Ways to assign meaning to an animal signal

A
  • Look at the state of the signal animal (encoding)
  • Observe the response of the receiving individuals (decoding)
  • e.g. bees communicating with their movements
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4
Q

Ritualization

A
  • The evolutionary process by which a behavior pattern becomes increasingly effective as a signal
  • Begins with a behavior that is functional in another context
  • The behavior eventually acquires a secondary value as a signal (e.g. human disgust facial expression)
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5
Q

Interspecies communication

A
  • Symbiotic relationship between cleaner fish and larger fish like sharks
  • Dog-human communication: dog owners and non owners could tell the difference between aggressive, fearful, and playful barks
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6
Q

Crows decoding static and artificial sign vehicles

A
  • Birds trapped by “dangerous” face mask and normal faces
  • Birds didn’t scold the dangerous mask prior to trapping
  • After trapping, crows scolded the dangerous face mask only
  • After normal faces trapped birds, they did not get scolded
  • Memory effect held 2.7 years after trapping
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7
Q

Olfactory communication

A
  • Earliest form of communication (chemical)
  • Rich in information: age, physical fitness, reproductive status, etc.
  • All but lost in primates, esp. humans
  • Can travel great distances
  • Some receivers are highly sensitive (e.g. female silk moth and bomobykol - able to detect ONE molecule!!)
  • Influence receivers’ actions
  • Scent can function as (1) territory marker, (2) a personal perfume
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8
Q

Auditory Communication

A
  • Sound signals can vary in pitch, loudness, frequency, and temporal pattern
  • Some only vary one of these (e.g. crickets)
  • Most vertebrates modulate temporal patterning and frequency
  • Sounds of the humpback whale can travel around the world in sound tunnels (underwater grand canyons)
  • Sound producing capacities can be artificially expanded (megaphone style)
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9
Q

Predator alarms in marmosets

A
  • Showed marmosets 1 of 4 different models of a predator (owl, falcon, 2 snakes)
  • Recorded their alarm calls
  • Played back their alarm calls to other marmosets
  • Recorded gaze of decoder
  • Calls given to birds are acoustically distinct from those given to snakes
  • Marmosets looked up while listening to playbacks of bird-elicited calls and down for snake-elicited calls.
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10
Q

Visual Displays

A

Displays are stereotyped motor pattern (they were once instrumentally functional, but now have a symbolic function)

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11
Q

Origins of displays

A

1) High emotion
2) intention movements (ex: warning/attacking: intentional)
3) displacement movements (ex: caged animal pacing)

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12
Q

Postures

A
  • Display posture often show off distinctive features (e.g. color patterns, weapons)
  • Can be a deterrent without injury to the adversary
  • Evolved as signals
  • Can be deceptive (e.g. distraction displays - making animal pay attention to you so that the predator doesn’t pay attention to something else, like their young)
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13
Q

Adjusting communication posture and movement to avoid predation

A

BROWN ANOLE LIZARD

  • 3 visual signals, (1) pushups (2) head bobs (3) the dewlap expression (a throat fan)
  • Head bob is least conspicuous
  • Stimulated attack with model of kestrel on fishing line
  • Lizards kept emitting head bobs but reduced dewlap expression and pushups
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14
Q

Animal facial expressions

A
  • Humans are very advance users of facial expression
  • Facial expression mostly used just my mammals
  • The more evolved the animal is, the more sophisticated its facial repertoire is (also have good vision)
  • Many similarities between human and nonhuman primate expression
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15
Q

Space and territoriality

A
  • Perfect balance of costs (energy to defend) with benefits (food, mates)
  • Some only defend territory during the breeding season
  • Spacing out from neighbors decreases the effect of predation and disease
  • Usually territory is only defended against members of same species who will consume same resources (rabbits don’t attack birds for territory because they don’t use the same resources)
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16
Q

Vocalization

A
  • Producing sound by vocal apparatus occur only in vertebrates
  • Designed to influence motivational state of other animals
  • Specialized structures (e.g. avian syrinx, mammalian larynx, air chambers in frogs, howler monkeys, etc.)
17
Q

Methods of producing sounds

A
  • Beating a substrate/surface
  • Rubbing appendages (crickets)
  • Blowing air through an orifice
18
Q

Using sound to communicate

A
  • In thick foliage have low pitched calls carry better through obstructions
  • In open air hav high pitched calls that cut through open air
  • Animals partition the airwaves like radio stations
  • Animals that live out of sight of each other (e.g. in leafy environments) have more developed vocabularies
  • Humans have a sophisticated vocal production apparatus (but limited in terms of loudness & frequency range)
19
Q

Tactile communication

A
  • Primates are some of the top users of tactile communication (but less so in humans)
  • Grooming is a sign of affection and bonding
  • Among the great apes, hand shakes are used to convey reassurance.