Evidence for compositionality in baboons (Papio papio) through the test case of negation.

Can non-human animals combine abstract representations much like humans do with language? In particular, can they entertain a compositional representation such as 'not blue'? Across two experiments, we demonstrate that baboons (Papio papio) show a capacity for compositionality. Experiment 1 showed that baboons can entertain negative, compositional, representations: they can learn to associate a cue with iconically related referents (e.g.

Impact of predator model presentation paradigms on titi monkey alarm sequences.

Abstract: Predator presentation experiments are widely used to investigate animal alarm vocalizations. They usually involve presentations of predator models or playbacks of predator calls, but it remains unclear whether the two paradigms provide similar results, a major limitation when investigating animal syntactic and semantic capacities. Here, we investigate whether visual and acoustic predator cues elicit different vocal reactions in black-fronted titi monkeys ().

Animal linguistics: a primer.

The evolution of language has been investigated by several research communities, including biologists and linguists, striving to highlight similar linguistic capacities across species. To date, however, no consensus exists on the linguistic capacities of non-human species. Major controversies remain on the use of linguistic terminology, analysis methods and behavioural data collection.

Dramatic decline in a titi monkey population after the 2016-2018 sylvatic yellow fever outbreak in Brazil.

Platyrrhini are highly vulnerable to the yellow fever (YF) virus. From 2016 to 2018, the Atlantic Forest of southeast Brazil faced its worst sylvatic YF outbreak in about a century, thought to have killed thousands of primates. It is essential to assess the impact of this epidemic on threatened primate assemblages to design effective conservation strategies.

Socially mediated overlap in vocal interactions between free-ranging black howler monkeys.

"Conversation rules" such as overlap avoidance and coordinated overlap have been reported in nonhuman animals, and seem to be adaptive responses to the requirements of social life. Some species display both patterns in an apparently flexible way, but the social factors mediating their respective usage remain poorly documented. We investigated the potential social factors guiding the usage of these temporal rules during collective howling in six free-ranging groups of black howler monkeys (Alouatta pigra).

Titi monkeys combine alarm calls to create probabilistic meaning.

Previous work suggested that titi monkeys combine two alarm calls, the A- and B-calls, to communicate about predator type and location. To explore how listeners process these sequences, we recorded alarm call sequences of six free-ranging groups exposed to terrestrial and aerial predator models, placed on the ground or in the canopy, and used multimodel inference to assess the information encoded in the sequences. We then carried out playback experiments to identify the features used by listeners to react to the available information.