Mother Vocal Recognition in Antarctic Fur Seal Arctocephalus gazella Pups: A Two-Step Process.

ABSTRACT: In otariids, mother's recognition by pups is essential to their survival since females nurse exclusively their own young and can be very aggressive towards non-kin. Antarctic fur seal, Arctocephalus gazella, come ashore to breed and form dense colonies. During the 4-month lactation period, females alternate foraging trips at sea with suckling period ashore. On each return to the colony, females and pups first use vocalizations to find each other among several hundred conspecifics and olfaction is used as a final check. Such vocal identification has to be highly efficient. In this present study, we investigated the components of the individual vocal signature used by pups to identify their mothers by performing playback experiments on pups with synthetic signals. We thus tested the efficien

SUBMITTER: Aubin T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4558088 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature