Individual identity of alarm calls in wild-living Brandt's voles (Lasiopodomys brandtii).

We investigated acoustic variation responsible for the individuality of alarm calls produced by 50 Brandt's voles Lasiopodomys brandtii derived from 50 different wild-living colonies. For the first time, we described the calling pattern of Brandt's voles, producing a long series of short alarm calls with short inter-call intervals. The alarm calls displayed four different contours of fundamental frequency but were nevertheless strongly individually distinct within a series of 50 successive alarm calls per caller (2500 analyzed alarm calls).

Exploring the Feasibility of Social Skills Programs for Autistic Youth Through Virtual Reality.

Many autistic individuals may desire support and services primarily in the areas of adaptive functioning and social well-being throughout their lifetime. There is a need for community-informed and person-centered social programs targeted for autistic adolescents and adults. New technology, such as virtual reality (VR), is being researched to assess the feasibility of providing therapeutic services to autistic individuals.

Relationship between acoustic traits of protesting cries of domestic kittens (Felis catus) and their individual chances for survival.

Domestic cat (Felis catus) mothers may rely on offspring cries to allocate resources in use of individuals with greater chances for survival and sacrifice the weak ones in case of impossibility to raise the entire large litter. Potential victims of this maternal strategy can enhance their chances of survival, by producing vocalizations with traits mimicking those of higher-quality offspring. We compared acoustic traits of 4990 cries produced during blood sampling by 57 two-week-old captive feral kittens (28 males, 29 females); 47 of them survived to 90 days of age and 10 died by reasons not related to traumas or aggression.

Acoustic complexity of pup isolation calls in Mongolian hamsters: 3-frequency phenomena and chaos.

Studying pup isolation calls of wild rodents provides background for developing new early-life animal models for biomedical research and drug testing. This study discovered a highly complex acoustic phenotype of pup isolation calls in 4-5-day-old Mongolian hamsters . We analyzed the acoustic structure of 5,010 isolation calls emitted in the broad range of frequencies (sonic, below 20 kHz, and ultrasonic, from 20 to 128 kHz) by 23 pups during 2-min isolation test trials, 1 trial per pup.

Comparison of ultrasonic isolation calls of pure-breeding and interspecies hybrid Phodopus dwarf hamster pups.

In mammalian cross-species hybrids, parameters of voice calls, produced by vocal fold vibrations, are intermediate between parental species. Inheritance of ultrasonic calls, produced by whistle mechanism, is unstudied for hybrids. We examined 4000 pup ultrasonic isolation-induced calls for peak power of call fundamental frequency and for call duration in 4-8-day-old captive hamsters of four Study Groups: pure Phodopus sungorus; pure P.