Hiss and snort call types of wild-living giraffes Giraffa camelopardalis: acoustic structure and context.

ABSTRACT:

Objectives

Vocalization as part of vigilance behaviour is widespread across animal taxa, including ruminants. Calls of wild-living giraffes have never been recorded and spectrographically investigated. This study reports the acoustic structure of vigilance-related hiss and snort calls of wild-living giraffes Giraffa camelopardalis.

Results

The hiss and snort calls were emitted during five recording sessions produced by nine individual giraffes (8 adults and 1 subadult) in their natural environment in Namibia (3 individuals) and Kenya (6 individuals). These calls attended vigilance behaviour toward humans in hides or in vehicles and cheetahs as natural predators of giraffe young. This study provides spectrographic analyses of 22 hiss and 20 snort calls. The giraffe hisses wer

SUBMITTER: Volodina EV 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5761111 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature