Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
Volume 279, Issue 1743, Pages 3749-3755Publisher
ROYAL SOC
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2012.0986
Keywords
Capra hircus; individual recognition; long-term memory; mammal; vocal communication
Categories
Funding
- Swiss National Science Foundation
- University of London Central Research Fund
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Parent-offspring recognition is crucial for offspring survival. At long distances, this recognition is mainly based on vocalizations. Because of maturation-related changes to the structure of vocalizations, parents have to learn successive call versions produced by their offspring throughout ontogeny in order to maintain recognition. However, because of the difficulties involved in following the same individuals over years, it is not clear how long this vocal memory persists. Here, we investigated long-term vocal recognition in goats. We tested responses of mothers to their kids' calls 7-13 months after weaning. We then compared mothers' responses to calls of their previous kids with their responses to the same calls at five weeks postpartum. Subjects tended to respond more to their own kids at five weeks postpartum than 11-17 months later, but displayed stronger responses to their previous kids than to familiar kids from other females. Acoustic analyses showed that it is unlikely that mothers were responding to their previous kids simply because they confounded them with the new kids they were currently nursing. Therefore, our results provide evidence for strong, long-term vocal memory capacity in goats. The persistence of offspring vocal recognition beyond weaning could have important roles in kin social relationships and inbreeding avoidance.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available