Zhang Chunmian, Zheng Ziqi, Lucas Jeffrey R, Wang Yicheng, Fan Xin, Zhao Xin, Feng Jiang, Sun Congnan, Jiang Tinglei
Hebei Key Laboratory of Animal Physiology, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, College of Life Sciences, Hebei Normal University, Shijiazhuang 050024, China.
Hebei Collaborative Innovation Center for Eco-Environment, Hebei Normal University, Shijiazhuang 050024, China.
iScience. 2024 Jun 28;27(7):110401. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2024.110401. eCollection 2024 Jul 19.
The study of vocal communication in non-human animals can uncover the roots of human languages. Recent studies of language have focused on two linguistic laws: Zipf's law and the Menzerath-Altmann law. However, whether bats' social vocalizations follow these linguistic laws, especially Menzerath's law, has largely been unexplored. Here, we used Asian particolored bats, , to examine whether aggressive vocalizations conform to Zipf's and Menzerath's laws. Aggressive vocalizations of adhere to Zipf's law, with the most frequent syllables being the shortest in duration. There was a negative association between the syllable number within a call and the average syllable duration, in agreement with Menzerath's law. A decrease in the proportion of some long syllables and a decrease in the duration of several syllable types in long-duration calls explain the occurrence of this law. Our results indicate that a general compression principle organizes aspects of bat vocal communication systems.
对非人类动物的声音交流进行研究能够揭示人类语言的根源。近期的语言研究聚焦于两条语言规律：齐普夫定律和门泽拉斯-阿尔特曼定律。然而，蝙蝠的社会发声是否遵循这些语言规律，尤其是门泽拉斯定律，在很大程度上尚未得到探索。在此，我们利用双色蝙蝠来研究攻击性发声是否符合齐普夫定律和门泽拉斯定律。双色蝙蝠的攻击性发声遵循齐普夫定律，即最频繁出现的音节持续时间最短。叫声中的音节数量与平均音节持续时间之间存在负相关，这与门泽拉斯定律相符。一些长音节比例的下降以及长时叫声中几种音节类型持续时间的减少解释了该定律的出现。我们的结果表明，一种普遍的压缩原则支配着蝙蝠声音交流系统的各个方面。
