Work

Categorical and semantic perception of the meaning of call types in zebra finches

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Vocal communication in social animals involves the production and perception of various calls that ethologists categorize into call-types, based on their acoustical structure and the behavioral context of production. Whether animals perceive these categories and associate distinct meanings to them remains unknown. The zebra finch, a gregarious songbird, uses approximately 11 call-types to communicate hunger, danger, social conflict, and establish social contact and bonding. Using auditory discrimination tasks, we show that the birds discriminate and categorize all the call-types in their vocal repertoire. In addition, systematic errors were more frequent between call-types used in similar behavioral contexts than could be expected from their acoustic similarity. Thus, zebra finches organize their calls into categories and create a mental representation of the meaning of these sounds.

Source: Science

DOI: 10.1126/science.ads8482

Authors: Julie E. Elie, Aude de Witasse-Thézy, Logan Thomas, Ben Malit, Frédéric E. Theunissen, Frédéric E. Theunissen

Institutions: University of California, Berkeley, Lyon 1 Université, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, Université de Lyon

Language: English

Topic: Animal Vocal Communication and Behavior

Subfield: Developmental Biology

Field: Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology

Domain: Life Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funder: National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders

Award: Auditory Circuits for Interpreting Vocal Communication Signals