Experimental evidence for limited vocal recognition in a wild primate: implications for the social complexity hypothesis

Abstract

Although monitoring social information is a key aspect of the social complexity hypothesis, surprisingly little work has compared social knowledge across different species of wild animals. In the present study, I use playback experiments to test for individual recognition in wild male geladas (Theropithecus gelada) to compare with published accounts of social knowledge in chacma baboons (Papio ursinus). Geladas and baboons are closely related primates living in socially complex groups that differ dramatically in group size-geladas routinely associate with more than 10 times the number of conspecifics than do baboons. Using grunts from non-rival males to simulate approaches, I examined the strength of a subject male's response when the 'approach' was from the direction of (i) non-rival males (control), or (ii) rival males (a more salient stimulus if playback grunts are not recognized by the subject). I compared responses separately based on the degree of social overlap between the caller and the subject. Responses indicate that male geladas, unlike baboons, do not use vocalizations to recognize all of the individuals they regularly encounter. This represents, to my knowledge, the first documented evidence of 'missing' social knowledge in a natural primate population. The sharp distinction between baboons and geladas suggests that geladas are either unable or unmotivated to keep track of the individual identity of other males in their multi-level society-even males with whom they have a large degree of social overlap. Thus, these results are consistent with the central assumption of the social complexity hypothesis that social cognition is costly.

Figure 1.

Spectrogram of a playback sequence of three short grunts and one prolonged grunt. Note geladas frequently produce vocalized inhalations during grunt sequences, and one can be seen between the third short grunt and the prolonged grunt. Spectrogam created using PRAAT 5.1.02 for Macintosh with a Gaussian window of 0.05 s.

Figure 2.

Summary of the time subjects looked towards the speaker in paired playback trials. On different days, each subject heard the same animal's vocalization from the direction of the bachelor group (‘towards bachelors’) or from the direction of the unit males (‘towards units’). Subjects and callers were either (a) in the same unit or team (within unit), (b) in a different unit but in the same band (within band), (c) or from different bands or herds (distant). Asterisk indicates significant differences at p < 0.05.

Figure 3.

Scatter plot of responses to playbacks against overlap between the subject and the caller. Each point represents a caller-subject pair. The response variable is the duration (in seconds) of looking when the call is played from the direction of the units subtracted from the duration of looking when the call is played from the direction of the bachelors (positive values indicate lack of recognition). Solid line is from linear regression and dashed lines indicate 95% confidence intervals for this regression.