Topic
Study of how animals exchange information through calls, gestures, facial expressions and other signals, within their species and with humans.
Wild African savanna elephants gesture intentionally, finds an Animal Cognition study that logged about 840 gestures in two South African parks. Its behavioural tests of intent put elephants, a lineage evolutionarily distant from primates, beside the apes in research on how gesture evolved.
Reality
University of Southern Denmark researchers found male tokay geckos inhale for about 0.1 seconds between call notes, then add pulses to lengthen the call. The study of seven captive males explains how a call already known to grow longer in noise does so within a limit set by breathing.
Reality
Earth Species Project and Elephant Voices researchers used machine learning on 902 Amboseli recordings and found rumbles converging within choruses. The matching showed up in particular social situations, a hint that the calls track what a family is doing.
Reality
Researchers including ElephantVoices' Mickey Pardo used machine learning on hundreds of Amboseli rumble recordings to predict elephant behavior above chance. Rumbles made in similar situations seem to share acoustic properties, a measurable start on cataloguing elephant calls.
Reality
For years, dog cognition mostly asked owners what their dogs were like. Rossano's soundboard project and two newer studies measure the dogs instead, though the published account is short on samples and controls.
Reality