A simple test of vocal individual recognition in wild meerkats
A simple test of vocal individual recognition in wild meerkats
复制标题
野生猫鼬声音个体识别的简单测试
作者：
S. Townsend;C. Allen;M. Manser
个体识别被认为是促进动物社会进化的关键能力。考虑到它的核心重要性，许多研究都探讨了动物王国中这种能力的程度。对个人声音的识别受到了特别的关注，部分原因是它提供了关于这种技能背后的认知过程的见解。虽然很多工作都集中在灵长类动物的声音个体识别上，但目前很少有数据显示非灵长类动物在自然条件下的类似技能。这可能是因为非灵长类哺乳动物社会没有提供明显的环境，可以严格测试声音个体识别。我们通过设计一个实验范式来测试猫鼬（Suricata suricatta）的个体识别，而不必依赖于自然发生的社会环境，从而解决了这一理解上的差距。结果表明，当面对一个物理上不可能的场景时——在两个不同的地方出现相同的猫鼬——受试者的反应比对照组更强烈，这是一个物理上可能的设置。我们认为，这为野生非灵长类哺乳动物的声音个体识别提供了第一个明确的证据，并希望这种新颖的实验设计将允许在自然环境下对个体识别进行更系统的跨物种比较。
Individual recognition is thought to be a crucial ability facilitating the evolution of animal societies. Given its central importance, much research has addressed the extent of this capacity across the animal kingdom. Recognition of individuals vocally has received particular attention due, in part, to the insights it provides regarding the cognitive processes that underlie this skill. While much work has focused on vocal individual recognition in primates, there is currently very little data showing comparable skills in non-primate mammals under natural conditions. This may be because non-primate mammal societies do not provide obvious contexts in which vocal individual recognition can be rigorously tested. We addressed this gap in understanding by designing an experimental paradigm to test for individual recognition in meerkats (Suricata suricatta) without having to rely on naturally occurring social contexts. Results suggest that when confronted with a physically impossible scenario—the presence of the same conspecific meerkat in two different places—subjects responded more strongly than during the control, a physically possible setup. We argue that this provides the first clear evidence for vocal individual recognition in wild non-primate mammals and hope that this novel experimental design will allow more systematic cross-species comparisons of individual recognition under natural settings.