![]() Though these effects can be explained through social facilitation, additional research indicates more-subtle forms of socially mediated vocal behavior. Vervet monkeys and meerkats, for example, alarm call less in the absence of conspecifics. A variety of studies, particularly those on the “audience effect,” indicate that animal vocal production can be varied according to social context. Communication, however, is an interactive process involving not just comprehension but also production, yet the cognitive mechanisms underlying call production remain ambiguous. Our findings shed important light on the degree to which animal vocal production can be considered as voluntary.Įmerging data suggest that animals are capable of flexibly processing the vocalizations of conspecifics. Results showed that relationship quality between the howler and the leaving individual better predicted howling than did the current physiological state. Using a separation experiment and by measuring cortisol levels, we specifically investigated whether howling is a physiological stress response to group fragmentation and whether it is driven by social factors, particularly relationship quality. We aimed to disentangle the relative contribution of both mechanisms by examining howling in captive wolves. While both explanations are plausible and neither excludes the other, to date no study has attempted to experimentally investigate the influence of both emotional and cognitive factors on animal vocal usage. Vocalizations may be driven by emotions and the physiological state evoked by changes in the social-ecological environment, or animals may have more control over their vocalizations, using them in flexible ways mediated by the animal’s understanding of its surrounding social world. While considerable research has addressed the function of animal vocalizations, the proximate mechanisms driving call production remain surprisingly unclear.
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