Chimpanzees use tree species with a resonant timbre for accumulative stone throwing.

ABSTRACT: Animals use tools for communication relatively rarely compared to tool use for extractive foraging. We investigated the tool-use behaviour accumulative stone throwing (AST) in wild chimpanzees, who regularly throw rocks at trees, producing impact sounds and resulting in the aggregations of rocks. The function of AST remains unknown but appears to be communication-related. We conducted field experiments to test whether impact sounds produced by throwing rocks at trees varied according to the tree's properties. Specifically, we compared impact sounds of AST and non-AST tree species. We measured three acoustic descriptors related to intrinsic timbre quality, and found that AST tree species produced impact sounds that were less damped, with spectral energy concentrated at lower frequencies com

SUBMITTER: Kalan AK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6936027 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature