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Nonlinear phenomena make animal calls alarming for human listeners

Terrade, Anna ; Massenet, Mathilde ; Pernel, Lise ; Mathevon, Nicolas ; Anikin, Andrey LU orcid and Reby, David (2025) In iScience 28(6).
Abstract
Animal vocalizations are extremely diverse, and evolutionary approaches to understanding this diversity assume some mapping between their acoustic form and communicative function, with specific features serving universal roles. Here, we investigate whether irregular vocal production with nonlinear phenomena contrib-
utes to the alarming quality of vertebrate calls. We resynthesized 98 calls of birds and mammals from 18 species, adding frequency jumps, subharmonics, amplitude modulation, or chaos. Human listeners then rated how alarming they found these calls in an immersive setting mimicking a forest at night. Chaos consistently
made the calls more alarming, but other tested NLP did not, confirming that chaos is particularly... (More)
Animal vocalizations are extremely diverse, and evolutionary approaches to understanding this diversity assume some mapping between their acoustic form and communicative function, with specific features serving universal roles. Here, we investigate whether irregular vocal production with nonlinear phenomena contrib-
utes to the alarming quality of vertebrate calls. We resynthesized 98 calls of birds and mammals from 18 species, adding frequency jumps, subharmonics, amplitude modulation, or chaos. Human listeners then rated how alarming they found these calls in an immersive setting mimicking a forest at night. Chaos consistently
made the calls more alarming, but other tested NLP did not, confirming that chaos is particularly suitable both for signaling alarm and, potentially, for intimidation in agonistic interactions. While our results suggest that nonlinear phenomena may have a broader function in the mammalian vocal repertoire, follow-up studies
should now investigate whether these perceptual effects induced by nonlinear phenomena extend to receivers in non-human species. (Less)
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author
; ; ; ; and
organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
in
iScience
volume
28
issue
6
pages
11 pages
publisher
Elsevier
external identifiers
  • scopus:105005428076
ISSN
2589-0042
DOI
10.1016/j.isci.2025.112600
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
da24909d-2cdf-4c3f-9b30-a4d64c517648
date added to LUP
2025-05-10 09:24:47
date last changed
2025-07-09 04:00:53
@article{da24909d-2cdf-4c3f-9b30-a4d64c517648,
  abstract     = {{Animal vocalizations are extremely diverse, and evolutionary approaches to understanding this diversity assume some mapping between their acoustic form and communicative function, with specific features serving universal roles. Here, we investigate whether irregular vocal production with nonlinear phenomena contrib-<br/>utes to the alarming quality of vertebrate calls. We resynthesized 98 calls of birds and mammals from 18 species, adding frequency jumps, subharmonics, amplitude modulation, or chaos. Human listeners then rated how alarming they found these calls in an immersive setting mimicking a forest at night. Chaos consistently<br/>made the calls more alarming, but other tested NLP did not, confirming that chaos is particularly suitable both for signaling alarm and, potentially, for intimidation in agonistic interactions. While our results suggest that nonlinear phenomena may have a broader function in the mammalian vocal repertoire, follow-up studies<br/>should now investigate whether these perceptual effects induced by nonlinear phenomena extend to receivers in non-human species.}},
  author       = {{Terrade, Anna and Massenet, Mathilde and Pernel, Lise and Mathevon, Nicolas and Anikin, Andrey and Reby, David}},
  issn         = {{2589-0042}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  number       = {{6}},
  publisher    = {{Elsevier}},
  series       = {{iScience}},
  title        = {{Nonlinear phenomena make animal calls alarming for human listeners}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2025.112600}},
  doi          = {{10.1016/j.isci.2025.112600}},
  volume       = {{28}},
  year         = {{2025}},
}