Not just humans flaunt their height and other physical attributes to stamp their superiority but mammals too tend to flaunt their hugeness while wooing their mates. This is what David Reby, a professor from United Kingdom-based University of Sussex, said while giving the key-note address on the second day of the International Bioacoustics Congress hosted by the department of Zoology and Environmental Science of Gurukul Kangri Vishwavidyalaya at SIIDCUl on Monday.
later, speaking to The Pioneer, Reby said, “As per a study recently made, mammals communicate their sizes in their calls to deter competitors. They make full use of their hugeness while making lower frequency sounds. This is to attract their mating partners. Animals use this frequency information to decide whether to fight or not. This they use too even in case of selecting their partners.”
He further dwelt on the animals making low-frequency (resonance) vocal sounds that usually only mammals of larger sizes can produce, something that makes them appear bigger to their potential mates. ‘Big’ is thus the buzz word in the world of the mammals, he said.
The researchers based in United Kingdom have studied the male vocal characteristics and body sizes among 72 land-based mammal species, such as koalas, lions, chimpanzees and humans.
“Mammals such as Howler Monkeys and Colobus Monkeys possess additional resonators while African elephants and southern elephant seals have snouts, things which nature has provided them with to attract mates. This explains why some of the male mammals tend to make them look bigger,” the professor said.
The most interesting part of the study undertaken by the UK-based team led by Reby is the voice calls of these animals. Mammals like Red Deer can cheat by stretching their vocal apparatus. It helps them sound bigger than what they actually are, he said.
“This analysis provides a useful background for future investigations of animal vocalisations by mapping the relationship between body size and frequency components across a very large number of species,” he said. While dwelling on the evolution of vocal communication, Reby said that the discovery that a male deer has a descended larynx is an anatomical innovation. It was previously believed to be uniquely human and a prerequisite for the emergence of human speech, he said.
Celebrated ornithologist Dinesh Bhatt who is the convenor of the Congress and the key person behind bringing the congregation to Haridwar said that a deeper study of the animal calls can help to understand how the humans use their voices to communicate in different contexts.