School of Psychology, University of Sussex, Falmer, East Sussex, BN1 9QH, UK.
Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, Salisbury, Wiltshire, SP4 0JQ, UK.
Sci Rep. 2021 Oct 5;11(1):19723. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-98967-w.
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.
许多哺乳动物物种会发出痛苦的叫声，以引起照顾者的注意。在不同的分类群中，这些叫声往往具有相似的声学结构，但频率范围不一定相同，这就提出了它们在种间交流潜力的问题。由于家犬对人类的情绪线索非常敏感，并且在听到人类哭声时会感到压力，因此我们探讨了它们对人类婴儿和幼犬痛苦哭声的反应是否取决于与同类的频率范围或特定物种的叫声特征共享。我们记录了成年犬对从篮子里的扬声器发出的幼犬和人类婴儿痛苦哭声的反应。哭声的频率既在其自然范围内呈现，也与其他物种的频率相匹配。至关重要的是，无论来源物种如何，落入犬类叫声频率范围内的叫声会引起更多的注意。因此，家犬的反应强烈依赖于频率范围。雌性的反应速度比雄性快，反应也比雄性强烈，这可能反映了亲代投资的不对称性。我们的研究结果表明，尽管驯化导致犬类对人类线索的总体反应增强，但它们对自然人类婴儿范围内的叫声的反应仍然明显低于幼犬范围内的叫声。狗似乎使用快速但不准确的决策过程来确定对类似痛苦的发声的反应。
