The effects of unrelated offspring whistle calls on capybaras (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris)

Brazilian Journal of Biology

E Dos Santos¹  Rs Tokumaru¹  Slg Nogueira Filho¹  Ssc Nogueira¹ 

关键词: animal communication;    bioacoustics;    Caviomorph;    parent-offspring communication;    vocal communication;    comunicação animal;    bioacústica;    Caviomorfos;    comunicação parente-filhote;    vocalização;   

DOI  :  10.1590/1519-6984.25212

来源: SciELO

【 摘 要 】

Parent-offspring vocal communication, such as the isolation call, is one of the essential adaptations in mammals that adjust parental responsiveness. Thus, our aim was to test the hypothesis that the function of the capybara infants' whistle is to attract conspecifics. We designed a playback experiment to investigate the reaction of 20 adult capybaras (seven males and 13 females) to pups' whistle calls – recorded from unrelated offspring – or to bird song, as control. The adult capybaras promptly responded to playback of unrelated pup whistles, while ignoring the bird vocalisation. The adult capybaras took, on average, 2.6 ± 2.5 seconds (s) to show a response to the whistles, with no differences between males and females. However, females look longer (17.0 ± 12.9 s) than males (3.0 ± 7.2 s) toward the sound source when playing the pups' whistle playback. The females also tended to approach the playback source, while males showed just a momentary interruption of ongoing behaviour (feeding). Our results suggest that capybara pups' whistles function as the isolation call in this species, but gender influences the intensity of the response.

【 授权许可】

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