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. 2011 Feb 23;7(1):71-4.
doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2010.0582. Epub 2010 Sep 1.

Vocal cues to male androgen levels in giant pandas

Benjamin D Charlton  1 , Jennifer L Keating, David Kersey, Li Rengui, Yan Huang, Ronald R Swaisgood
Affiliations

Vocal cues to male androgen levels in giant pandas

Benjamin D Charlton et al. Biol Lett. .

Abstract

Little is known about the potential of non-human mammal vocalizations to signal information on the hormonal status of the caller. In the current study, we used endocrine data and acoustic analyses to determine whether male giant panda bleats provide reliable information about the caller's current androgen levels. Our results revealed significant relationships between acoustic features of male giant panda bleats and the caller's faecal androgen metabolite concentrations. To our knowledge, this constitutes the first demonstration that the acoustic structure of a non-human mammal call has the potential to yield information about the caller's current androgen levels. We go on to discuss the anatomical basis for our findings and the potential functional relevance of signalling information on male androgen levels in giant panda sexual communication.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
(a) Waveform and (b) spectrogram to illustrate the acoustic features of giant panda bleats we measured. Spectrogram settings: window length, 0.03 s; time steps, 250; frequency steps, 1000; Gaussian window; dynamic range, 50 dB.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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