Dogs' sensitivity to strange pup separation calls: pitch instability increases attention regardless of sex and experience
Section snippets
Vocal Expression and Inner State
Acoustic characteristics of calls are affected by the caller's physical/morphological parameters and inner state. The source–filter theory describes sound production as a two-stage process in the source (larynx) and the filter (supralaryngeal vocal tract; Fant, 1971, Titze and Martin, 1994). The central structure of sound production in mammals is the larynx with two vocal folds, which determines the f0 of the calls caused by the periodicity of the opening–closing cycles of the glottis (vocal
Ethical Note
Ethical approval was obtained through the National Animal Experimentation Ethics Committee of Hungary (PEI/001/1056-4/2015). Owners completed a written consent form, which permitted them to volunteer their dogs to participate in the study.
Subjects
We initially had a sample of 162 dogs but 11 had to be excluded for various reasons: one was a hermaphrodite, one was pseudopregnant, two were neutered after having a litter, one showed distress after entering the room, three females had no puppies of their
Results
The 17 percentage variables (three of the 20 behaviour variables were excluded) were combined into six principal components (attention, stand, owner attention initiation, speaker exploration, escape and stress, and door exploration; Table 3). Model results are given below and in the Appendix.
Discussion
To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the effects of dog pups' separation calls on adult dogs. Using a playback method, we investigated the reactions of adult intact and neutered female and male dogs with different parental experience to strange pup separation calls that varied in their acoustic characteristics (f0, call length, jitter and NLPR). Our results suggest that the dogs' behaviour was mainly influenced by the acoustic characteristics of the calls, while sex, sexual
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to all owners and their dogs for their participation in the study. We were funded by the National Talent Program (NTP-NFTÖ-16-B), the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA 01 031) and the MTA TKI PPD Grant (460002). We are also thankful to the anonymous referees for their helpful comments and Dr Angela Turner for improving the language of our manuscript.
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