Prairie dog alarm calls encode labels about predator colors.

Some animals have the cognitive capacity to differentiate between different species of predators and generate different alarm calls in response. However, the presence of any addition information that might be encoded into alarm calls has been largely unexplored. In the present study, three similar-sized human females walked through a Gunnison's prairie dog (Cynomys gunnisoni) colony wearing each of three different-colored shirts: blue, green, and yellow. We recorded the alarm calls and used discriminant function analysis to assess whether the calls for the different-colored shirts were significantly different. The results showed that the alarm calls for the blue and the yellow shirts were significantly different,...

Categories: Publication; Types: Citation, Journal Citation; Tags: Animal Cognition, Sciuridae, Sciuridae: psychology, Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, animal, All tags... animals, cognition, color perception, discriminant analysis, discrimination (psychology), female, humans, information dissemination, recognition (psychology), sound spectrography, vocalization, Fewer tags