ReaderMX.
环球科学

吃肉之前，斑鬣狗为啥要围在一起傻笑？（附笑声音频）｜科学60秒

环环球科学约 2 分钟

Image

排排坐，咯咯笑
Image
嘿嘿嘿 @Unsplash
斑鬣狗会发出咕噜声和咆哮声，但它们最出名的是这种奇怪的笑声 [咯咯咯咯]，这种笑声究竟是怎么回事呢？
野外研究员注意到，一群鬣狗在大快朵颐之前，往往会围着猎物咯咯笑。发表在《BMC生态学》（BMC Ecology）杂志上的一项研究称，这些笑声可能传达了年龄、身份和社会地位等信息，这对于决定谁能吃到最美味的那块肉极为重要。
研究人员对生活在美国加州大学伯克利分校（U.C. Berkeley）校园后面一个保护区里的斑鬣狗家族进行了研究。他们用骨头和肉块引诱了17只饥饿的鬣狗，并记录了大约250段咯咯笑。然后，他们通过各种计算机算法对这些声音片段进行了统计分析并绘制了频谱图。
结果如何？他们说，笑声的音调和音色可以确定鬣狗的身份，其中音调代表着年龄。咯咯声也能传达出谁是……[查看全文]

Hyena Laughter Is Serious Business

Spotted hyenas grunt and growl. But you know what they're famous for. [Hyena sounds.] So what's all the laughing about?

Well, field researchers have noticed that groups of hyenas tend to giggle around a kill, while they're waiting for their hunk of meat. Now 

a study in the journal BMC Ecology says the chuckles may communicate things like age, identity and social status. Which is important stuff for figuring out who gets the tastiest cut of zebra.
Researchers [Nicolas Mathevon et al.] studied a clan of spotted hyenas living in a sanctuary behind the U.C. Berkeley campus. They enticed 17 hungry hyenas with bones or pieces of meat, and recorded about 250 bouts of giggling. Then they ran those sound bites through various computer algorithms, running statistical analyses and drawing up spectrograms.
The result? They say a giggle's pitch and timbre establish a hyena's identity, and that pitch indicates age. But the giggle also tells you who's...[full transcript]

“

论文信息

Mathevon, N., Koralek, A., Weldele, M. et al. What the hyena's laugh tells: Sex, age, dominance and individual signature in the giggling call of Crocuta crocuta. BMC Ecol 10, 9 (2010).

DOI: 10.1186/1472-6785-10-9

扫码关注“领研网”微信公众号

订阅最新“科学60秒”英语新闻

不再漏掉任何一次新知 plus 练耳的机会~

Image

KEEP THE THREAD GOING

更多来源文章