Tamás Faragó, Péter Pongrácz, Friederike Range, Zsófia
Virányi, Ádám Miklósi
‘The bone is mine’: affective and referential aspects of dog
growls
Animal Behaviour, Volume 79, Issue 4, April 2010, Pages
917–925
Abstract
A number of species are considered to
use functionally referential signals such as alarm calls or food-related
vocalizations. However, this particular function of communicative interaction
has not previously been found in canids. We provide the first experimental
indication that domestic dogs, Canis familiaris,
rely on context-dependent signals during interspecific agonistic encounters. We
recorded several sequences of growls from dogs in three different contexts:
during play, guarding a bone from another dog, and reacting to a threatening
stranger. We analysed the acoustic structure of the growls and additionally
performed playback tests in a seminatural food-guarding situation. We found
that play growls differed acoustically from the other two (agonistic) types of
growls, mainly in their fundamental frequencies and formant dispersions.
Results of the playback experiment showed that food-guarding growls deterred
other dogs from taking away a seemingly unattended bone more effectively than
growls recorded in the threatening stranger situation. We ruled out an effect
of the signaller's body weight on the subjects' responses. These results
provide the first evidence of context specificity of agonistic vocalizations in
the dog. We discuss the possible aspects of honesty and deception through
acoustic modulation of growls.
