Abstract
The ability to recognize conspecifics by their acoustic signals is of crucial importance to social animals, especially where visibility is limited, because it allows for discrimination between familiar and unfamiliar individuals and facilitates associations with and the avoidance of particular conspecifics. Animals may also benefit from an ability to recognize and use the information coded into the auditory signals of other species. Companion species such as dogs, cats, and horses are able to discriminate between familiar and unfamiliar human voices; however, whether this ability is widespread across vertebrates is still unknown. Using playback experiments, we tested whether western gorillas living at Zoo Atlanta were able to discriminate between the voices of subgroups of people: i.e., unfamiliar individuals, familiar individuals with whom the gorillas had positive interactions, and familiar individuals with whom they had negative interactions. Gorillas responded significantly more often (longer gazing duration, higher gazing frequency, shorter latency, and larger number of distress behaviors) to the voices of unfamiliar and familiar-negative individuals than to those of familiar-positive individuals, indicating that they recognized the voices of subgroup of people based on familiarity and possibly the nature of the relationship with them. Future studies should determine whether this is also the case in the wild, where interspecific associations with humans are less intense than they are in captive settings.
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Acknowledgements
We thank all the Zoo Atlanta workers (caregivers, veterinarians, and maintenance staff) and UGA employees who agreed to have their voices recorded. We are particularly grateful to the gorilla caregivers who helped us logistically with this project, and to the gorillas who participated in this study. We thank Haleigh Randazzo, who co-coded the videos, and the Center for Geospatial Research for the use of video equipment. The project was funded by the University of Georgia and through The Experiment Crowdsource Platform. We would like to personally thank Douglas Murray, Alex Piel, Ari Grossman, Manuela Nanni, Barbara Orelli, Lynne LaVallee, David, Ashley Sullivan, Stacy Watts, Marc Myers, Wendy M. Erb, Eileen Larney, Theresa R. Jones, Debbie Copan, Edwin Watts, Jade Schmitt, Tara Stoinski, Cristiano Marinucci, Jessica Lodwick, S. R. Batchelder, Cindy Maupin, Cornelia Seiffert, Patti L. R., Kerry Ossi-Lupo, Stacy Eason, Cara N. Love, Donita Schultz, John Boone, Natalie Schwob, Alexis Stern, Christina Doyle Sheehan, Linda Fabiani, Cherri Cherri, Jan Gogarten, Anja Deppe, Raymond Vagell, Fabrizio Salmi, Eric D. Walters, and a few more anonymous supporters for their donations. Our research protocol was approved by the Zoo Atlanta Scientific Review and by the Committee Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of the University of Georgia and adhered to the Code of Best Practices for Field Primatology of the International Primatological Society and the American Society of Primatology.
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Salmi, R., Jones, C.E. & Carrigan, J. Who is there? Captive western gorillas distinguish human voices based on familiarity and nature of previous interactions. Anim Cogn 25, 217–228 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-021-01543-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-021-01543-y