‘Beware, I am large and dangerous’ – human listeners can be deceived by dynamic manipulation of the indexical content of agonistic dog growls

IF 1.9 2区 生物学 Q3 BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
Péter Pongrácz, Petra Dobos, Borbála Zsilák, Tamás Faragó, Bence Ferdinandy
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Abstract

Dishonest vocal signals about body size are rarely encountered, however, dogs are capable of modifying indexical information in their growls. This apparent acoustic body-size manipulation could be affected by the level of threat experienced by the dog. We tested whether this natural size manipulation actually affects how listeners assess the size of the dog, thus whether it could be considered as a successful indexical information manipulation. We requested human participants to assess dog growls, originally recorded when dogs encountered various ‘threatening strangers’ (of different sex, stature). The participants heard several sets of growl pairs, where they had to guess, which growl belonged to the ‘larger dog’. In the Control condition, dog growls originated from two different dogs in a pair; in the Test condition, growls of the same dog were presented pair by pair, always recorded in the presence of different threatening humans. Human listeners reliably picked the larger dog from two differently sized animals based on their growls alone. In the Test condition, participants thought that the dog was ‘larger’ when it was threatened by a female experimenter, and when the dog was growling at a larger sized human. We found that while growl length modulation was the main factor behind size-choice decisions in the case of female strangers, formant dispersion difference contributed the most when listeners chose which dog was the larger in the case of male opponents. Our results provide firsthand evidence of dogs’ functionally deceptive vocalizations towards humans, a phenomenon which has not been shown before in any interspecific scenario.

Abstract Image

当心,我又大又危险"--人类听众可以通过动态操纵狗的咆哮声中的索引内容而上当受骗
关于身体大小的不诚实声音信号很少遇到,但是,狗能够在咆哮声中修改索引信息。这种明显的体型声学操纵可能会受到狗所经历的威胁程度的影响。我们测试了这种自然的体型操纵是否会影响听者如何评估狗的体型,从而是否可以将其视为一种成功的索引信息操纵。我们要求人类参与者对狗的咆哮声进行评估,这些咆哮声最初是在狗遇到各种 "威胁性陌生人"(性别、身材各不相同)时录制的。参与者会听到几组成对的咆哮声,他们必须猜测哪种咆哮声属于 "较大的狗"。在 "对照组 "条件下,狗的咆哮声来自一对不同的狗;而在 "测试组 "条件下,同一只狗的咆哮声则是一对对地出现,而且总是在不同的威胁人类的情况下录制的。人类听者仅凭咆哮声就能从两只不同体型的动物中选出体型较大的狗。在 "测试 "条件下,当狗受到女性实验者的威胁时,以及当狗向体型较大的人类咆哮时,参与者会认为狗 "体型较大"。我们发现,在雌性陌生人的情况下,咆哮声长度调制是决定狗大小的主要因素,而在雄性对手的情况下,当听者选择哪只狗更大时,声调分散差异的作用最大。我们的研究结果提供了狗对人类进行功能性欺骗发声的第一手证据,这种现象以前从未在任何种间情景中出现过。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
3.90
自引率
8.70%
发文量
146
审稿时长
3 months
期刊介绍: The journal publishes reviews, original contributions and commentaries dealing with quantitative empirical and theoretical studies in the analysis of animal behavior at the level of the individual, group, population, community, and species.
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