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Zuberbühler, Klaus

Nom
Zuberbühler, Klaus
Affiliation principale
Fonction
Professeur ordinaire
Email
klaus.zuberbuehler@unine.ch
Identifiants
https://libra.unine.ch/handle/123456789/670
_
0000-0001-8378-088X

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  • Publication
    Accès libre
    Alarm Calls
    Zuberbühler, Klaus 
    Alarm calls are a firm constituent of antipredator behavior in many species. They are interesting because they provide an evolutionary conundrum. Why behave conspicuously in the face of a predator? Research is reviewed showing that the main evolutionary forces, such as individual, kin, and sexual selection, have favored the evolution and maintenance of alarm call behavior in various ways. Second, alarm calls are interesting from a cognitive perspective because they provide an entryway into an animal's mind. Research with nonhuman primates has been particularly fruitful in showing how our closest relatives recruit cognitive abilities similar to those involved in speech processing.
  • Publication
    Accès libre
    Predation increases acoustic complexity in primate alarm calls
    Stephan, Claudia 
    ;
    Zuberbühler, Klaus 
    According to most accounts, alarm calling in non-human primates is a biologically hardwired behaviour with signallers having little control over the acoustic structure of their calls. In this study, we compared the alarm calling behaviour of two adjacent populations of Diana monkeys at Taï forest (Ivory Coast) and Tiwai Island (Sierra Leone), which differ significantly in predation pressure. At Taï, monkeys regularly interact with two major predators, crowned eagles and leopards, while at Tiwai, monkeys are only hunted by crowned eagles. We monitored the alarm call responses of adult male Diana monkeys to acoustic predator models. We found no site-specific differences in the types of calls given to eagles, leopards and general disturbances, but there were consistent differences in how callers assembled calls into sequences. At Tiwai, males responded to leopards and general disturbances in the same way, while at Taï, males discriminated by giving call sequences that differed in the number of component calls. Responses to eagles were identical at both sites. We concluded that Diana monkeys are predisposed to use their repertoire in context-specific ways, but that ontogenetic experience determines how individual calls are assembled into meaningful sequences.
  • Publication
    Accès libre
    The alarm call system of female Campbell's monkeys
    Ouattara, Karim
    ;
    Zuberbühler, Klaus 
    ;
    N'Goran, Koffi J.-N
    ;
    Gombert, Jean-Emile
    Field studies on male forest guenon alarm-calling behaviour have revealed a number of intricacies about how these primates use vocalizations to protect themselves from predation. In these species, the vocal behaviour of adult females is often different from that of the males, but little systematic work has been done. Here, we describe the alarm call system of female Campbell's monkeys, Cercopithecus campbelli, in their natural forest habitat in western Ivory Coast. We found that in response to disturbing events, females produced three basic alarm call types, ‘wak-oos’, ‘hoks’ and acoustically variable ‘trill’ calls, consisting of repeated and rapidly ascending (RRA) pulses, which varied systematically in the temporal and frequency domains. Using observational and experimental data we were able to demonstrate that the RRA calls consisted of four acoustic variants, which could be associated with specific contexts, allowing listeners to draw inferences about the type of disturbance experienced by the caller. We also compared the alarm call behaviour of free-ranging individuals with published results from captivity. As predicted, captive individuals failed to produce predator-specific alarm calls, but they also produced an RRA variant in response to humans that was absent in the wild. We discuss the relevance of these findings in terms of their broader potential impact on evolutionary theories of primate communication.
  • Publication
    Accès libre
    The Phylogenetic Roots of Language: Evidence From Primate Communication and Cognition
    Zuberbühler, Klaus 
    The anatomy of the nonhuman primate vocal tract is not fundamentally different from the human one. Notwithstanding, nonhuman primates are remarkably unskillful at controlling vocal production and at combining basic call units into more complex strings. Instead, their vocal behavior is linked to specific psychological states, which are evoked by events in their social or physical environment. Humans are the only primates that have evolved the ability to produce elaborate and willfully controlled vocal signals, although this may have been a fairly recent invention. Despite their expressive limitations, non-human primates have demonstrated a surprising degree of cognitive complexity when responding to other individuals' vocalizations, suggesting that, as recipients, crucial linguistic abilities are part of primate cognition. Pivotal aspects of language comprehension, particularly the ability to process semantic content, may thus be part of our primate heritage. The strongest evidence currently comes from Old World monkeys, but recent work indicates that these capacities may also be present in our closest relatives, the chimpanzees.