Semantic information distinguishing individual predators in the alarm calls of Gunnison's prairie dogs
TL;DR
Foundational paper proving prairie dog alarm calls encode semantic information about specific predator types.
This foundational paper demonstrated that prairie dog alarm calls contain semantic information about specific predator types. Different calls encode different threats - hawks, coyotes, humans - allowing receivers to respond appropriately to each. This was groundbreaking evidence that non-human animals could encode referential information in vocalizations, previously thought to be uniquely human.
Key Findings from Slobodchikoff et al. (1991)
- Prairie dogs produce acoustically distinct alarm calls for different predator types
- Calls for hawks, coyotes, and humans are discriminable by spectrographic analysis
- Receivers respond differently to playbacks of different predator alarm calls
- Semantic specificity in alarm calls was previously thought unique to primates
- Information encoding enables proportional defensive responses