Kong Xuanmin, Liu Dan, Kathait Atul, Cui Yonglu, Wang Qi, Yang Shenfan, Li Xin, Gong Ming, Roberts Nathan, Xing Xiaoying, Jiang Guangshun
Feline Research Center of National Forestry and Grassland Administration, College of Wildlife and Protected Area, Northeast Forestry University, Harbin, Heilongjiang, China.
Siberia Tiger Park, Harbin, Heilongjiang, China.
BMC Zool. 2022 Jan 4;7(1):2. doi: 10.1186/s40850-021-00102-9.
The Amur tiger (Panthera tigris altaica) is the largest and one of the most endangered cats in the world. In wild and captive cats, communication is mainly dependent on olfaction. However, vocal communication also plays a key role between mother and cubs during the breeding period. How cubs express their physiological and psychological needs to their mother and companions by using acoustic signals is little known and mainly hindered by the difficult process of data collection. Here, we quantitatively summarized the vocal repertoire and behavioral contexts of captive Amur tiger cubs. The aim of the present work was to investigate the behavioral motivations of cub calls by considering influential factors of age, sex, and rearing experiences.
The 5335 high-quality calls from 65 tiger cubs were classified into nine call types (Ar-1, Ar-2, Er, eee, Chuff, Growl, Hiss, Haer, and Roar) produced in seven behavioral contexts. Except for Er, eight of the nine call types were context-specific, related to Play (Ar-2, eee, and Roar), Isolation (Ar-1), Offensive Context (Haer, Growl, and Hiss), and a friendly context (Chuff).
The results suggest that cubs are not quiet, but instead they express rich information by emitting various call types, which are probably crucial for survival in the wild. We herein provide the first detailed spectrogram classification to indicate vocal repertoires of calls and their coding with respect to behavioral contexts in Amur tiger cubs, and we pave the steps for revealing their social communication system, which can be applied for conservation of populations. These insights can help tiger managers or keepers to improve the rearing conditions by understanding the feline cubs' inner status and needs by monitoring their vocal information expressions and exchanges.
东北虎（Panthera tigris altaica）是世界上体型最大且最濒危的猫科动物之一。在野生和圈养猫科动物中，交流主要依赖嗅觉。然而，在繁殖期，声音交流在母虎和幼崽之间也起着关键作用。幼崽如何通过声音信号向母亲和同伴表达其生理和心理需求鲜为人知，主要原因是数据收集过程困难。在此，我们定量总结了圈养东北虎幼崽的声音 repertoire 及行为背景。本研究的目的是通过考虑年龄、性别和饲养经历等影响因素来探究幼崽叫声的行为动机。
来自65只虎崽的5335个高质量叫声被分为九种叫声类型（Ar - 1、Ar - 2、Er、eee、Chuff、Growl、Hiss、Haer和Roar），这些叫声出现在七种行为背景中。除了Er，九种叫声类型中的八种具有特定背景，与玩耍（Ar - 2、eee和Roar）、隔离（Ar - 1）、攻击背景（Haer、Growl和Hiss）以及友好背景（Chuff）有关。
结果表明，幼崽并非安静无声，而是通过发出各种叫声类型来表达丰富信息，这可能对其在野外生存至关重要。我们在此首次提供了详细的声谱图分类，以表明东北虎幼崽叫声的声音 repertoire 及其与行为背景的编码关系，为揭示它们的社会交流系统奠定了基础，该系统可应用于种群保护。这些见解有助于老虎管理者或饲养员通过监测幼猫的声音信息表达和交流来了解它们的内心状态和需求，从而改善饲养条件。
