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Effect of pitch range on dogs’ response to conspecific vs. heterospecific distress cries

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posted on 2023-06-10, 02:18 authored by Holly Root-Gutteridge, Victoria F Ratcliffe, Justine Neumann, Lucia Timarchi, Chloe Yeung, Anna Teresa KorzeniowskaAnna Teresa Korzeniowska, Nicolas Mathevon, David Reby
Distress cries are emitted by many mammal species to elicit caregiving attention. Across taxa, these calls tend to share similar acoustic structures, but not necessarily frequency range, raising the question of their interspecific communicative potential. As domestic dogs are highly responsive to human emotional cues and experience stress when hearing human cries, we explore whether their responses to distress cries from human infants and puppies depend upon sharing conspecific frequency range or species-specific call characteristics. We recorded adult dogs’ responses to distress cries from puppies and human babies, emitted from a loudspeaker in a basket. The frequency of the cries was presented in both their natural range and also shifted to match the other species. Crucially, regardless of species origin, calls falling into the dog call-frequency range elicited more attention. Thus, domestic dogs’ responses depended strongly on the frequency range. Females responded both faster and more strongly than males, potentially reflecting asymmetries in parental care investment. Our results suggest that, despite domestication leading to an increased overall responsiveness to human cues, dogs still respond considerably less to calls in the natural human infant range than puppy range. Dogs appear to use a fast but inaccurate decision-making process to determine their response to distress-like vocalisations.

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Published version

Journal

Scientific Reports

ISSN

2045-2322

Publisher

Nature Research

Issue

1

Volume

11

Page range

1-10

Article number

a19723

Event location

England

Department affiliated with

  • Psychology Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2022-01-14

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2022-01-14

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2022-01-14

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