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Juvenile vervet monkeys rely on others when responding to danger

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Mohr_2023_AC_Juveile_vervet_CC.pdf (487.7Kb)
Date
07/04/2023
Author
Mohr, T.
van de Waal, E.
Zuberbühler, K.
Mercier, S.
Keywords
Alarm call
Audience effect
Chlorocebus pygerythrus
QL Zoology
BF Psychology
NDAS
MCP
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Abstract
Primate alarm calls are mainly hardwired but individuals need to adapt their calling behaviours according to the situation. Such learning necessitates recognising locally relevant dangers and may take place via their own experience or by observing others. To investigate monkeys alarm calling behaviour, we carried out a field experiment in which we exposed juvenile vervet monkeys to unfamiliar raptor models in the presence of audiences that differed in experience and reliability. We used audience age as a proxy for experience and relatedness as a proxy for reliability, while quantifying audience reactions to the models. We found a negative correlation between alarm call production and callers’ age. Adults never alarm called, compared to juveniles. We found no overall effect of audience composition and size, with juveniles calling more when with siblings than mothers or unrelated individuals. Finally, concerning audience reactions to the models, we observed juveniles remained silent with vigilant mothers and only alarm called with ignoring mothers, whereas we observed the opposite for siblings: juveniles remained silent with ignoring siblings and called with vigilant siblings. Despite the small sample size, juvenile vervet monkeys, confronted with unfamiliar and potentially dangerous raptors, seem to rely on others to decide whether to alarm call, demonstrating that the choice of the model may play an important key role in the ontogeny of primate alarm call behaviour.
Citation
Mohr , T , van de Waal , E , Zuberbühler , K & Mercier , S 2023 , ' Juvenile vervet monkeys rely on others when responding to danger ' , Animal Cognition . https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-023-01765-2
Publication
Animal Cognition
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-023-01765-2
ISSN
1435-9448
Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © The Author(s) 2023. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Description
Funding: Open access funding provided by University of Lausanne. Funding was provided by FP7 Ideas: European Research Council, 283871, Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung, 310030_143359, PP00P3_170624, Branco Weiss Fellowship-Society in Science.
Collections
  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/27447

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