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Article Dans Une Revue The Science of Nature Naturwissenschaften Année : 2013

Social partner discrimination based on sounds and scents in Asian small-clawed otters (Aonyx cinereus)

Résumé

Ability to discriminate familiar conspecifics is an essential competence in any group-living species, ensuring socio-spatial cohesion, but in many animals, such as mustelids, the relative importance of the different communicative modalities for discrimination is poorly understood. In otters, there is evidence of intra-specific variation in physical appearance and in feces chemical profile, but the potential for acoustic identity coding as well as for identity decoding in visual, acoustic and olfactive domains remains unexplored. We investigated the acoustic structure of contact calls in five captive groups of small-clawed otters and found that it is possible to reliably assign one particular call to a given adult male caller. Females discriminated between familiar and unfamiliar adult males based on their sound (playback) and smell (feces) but not based on their picture, suggesting abilities to memorize and use acoustic and olfactive signatures in their daily social life.

Dates et versions

hal-01019941 , version 1 (07-07-2014)

Identifiants

Citer

Alban Lemasson, Marie-Ana Mikus, Catherine Blois-Heulin, Thierry Lodé. Social partner discrimination based on sounds and scents in Asian small-clawed otters (Aonyx cinereus). The Science of Nature Naturwissenschaften, 2013, 100 (3), pp.275--279. ⟨10.1007/s00114-013-1022-9⟩. ⟨hal-01019941⟩
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