Interactive bioacoustic playback as a tool for detecting and exploring nonhuman intelligence: “conversing” with an Alaskan humpback whale
Here we report on a rare and opportunistic acoustic turn-taking with an adult female humpback whale, known as Twain, in Southeast Alaska. Post hoc acoustic and statistical analyses of a 20-min acoustic exchange between the broadcast of a recorded contact call, known as a ‘whup/throp’, with call resp...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:10693240 2024-01-07T09:43:48+01:00 Interactive bioacoustic playback as a tool for detecting and exploring nonhuman intelligence: “conversing” with an Alaskan humpback whale McCowan, Brenda Hubbard, Josephine Walker, Lisa Sharpe, Fred Frediani, Jodi Doyle, Laurance 2023-11-29 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10693240/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/38047015 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.16349 en eng PeerJ Inc. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10693240/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/38047015 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.16349 © 2023 McCowan et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited. PeerJ Animal Behavior Text 2023 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.16349 2023-12-10T01:44:32Z Here we report on a rare and opportunistic acoustic turn-taking with an adult female humpback whale, known as Twain, in Southeast Alaska. Post hoc acoustic and statistical analyses of a 20-min acoustic exchange between the broadcast of a recorded contact call, known as a ‘whup/throp’, with call responses by Twain revealed an intentional human-whale acoustic (and behavioral) interaction. Our results show that Twain participated both physically and acoustically in three phases of interaction (Phase 1: Engagement, Phase 2: Agitation, Phase 3: Disengagement), independently determined by blind observers reporting on surface behavior and respiratory activity of the interacting whale. A close examination of both changes to the latency between Twain’s calls and the temporal matching to the latency of the exemplar across phases indicated that Twain was actively engaged in the exchange during Phase 1 (Engagement), less so during Phase 2 (Agitation), and disengaged during Phase 3 (Disengagement). These results, while preliminary, point to several key considerations for effective playback design, namely the importance of salient, dynamic and adaptive playbacks, that should be utilized in experimentation with whales and other interactive nonhuman species. Text Humpback Whale Alaska PubMed Central (PMC) PeerJ 11 e16349 |
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Animal Behavior McCowan, Brenda Hubbard, Josephine Walker, Lisa Sharpe, Fred Frediani, Jodi Doyle, Laurance Interactive bioacoustic playback as a tool for detecting and exploring nonhuman intelligence: “conversing” with an Alaskan humpback whale |
topic_facet |
Animal Behavior |
description |
Here we report on a rare and opportunistic acoustic turn-taking with an adult female humpback whale, known as Twain, in Southeast Alaska. Post hoc acoustic and statistical analyses of a 20-min acoustic exchange between the broadcast of a recorded contact call, known as a ‘whup/throp’, with call responses by Twain revealed an intentional human-whale acoustic (and behavioral) interaction. Our results show that Twain participated both physically and acoustically in three phases of interaction (Phase 1: Engagement, Phase 2: Agitation, Phase 3: Disengagement), independently determined by blind observers reporting on surface behavior and respiratory activity of the interacting whale. A close examination of both changes to the latency between Twain’s calls and the temporal matching to the latency of the exemplar across phases indicated that Twain was actively engaged in the exchange during Phase 1 (Engagement), less so during Phase 2 (Agitation), and disengaged during Phase 3 (Disengagement). These results, while preliminary, point to several key considerations for effective playback design, namely the importance of salient, dynamic and adaptive playbacks, that should be utilized in experimentation with whales and other interactive nonhuman species. |
format |
Text |
author |
McCowan, Brenda Hubbard, Josephine Walker, Lisa Sharpe, Fred Frediani, Jodi Doyle, Laurance |
author_facet |
McCowan, Brenda Hubbard, Josephine Walker, Lisa Sharpe, Fred Frediani, Jodi Doyle, Laurance |
author_sort |
McCowan, Brenda |
title |
Interactive bioacoustic playback as a tool for detecting and exploring nonhuman intelligence: “conversing” with an Alaskan humpback whale |
title_short |
Interactive bioacoustic playback as a tool for detecting and exploring nonhuman intelligence: “conversing” with an Alaskan humpback whale |
title_full |
Interactive bioacoustic playback as a tool for detecting and exploring nonhuman intelligence: “conversing” with an Alaskan humpback whale |
title_fullStr |
Interactive bioacoustic playback as a tool for detecting and exploring nonhuman intelligence: “conversing” with an Alaskan humpback whale |
title_full_unstemmed |
Interactive bioacoustic playback as a tool for detecting and exploring nonhuman intelligence: “conversing” with an Alaskan humpback whale |
title_sort |
interactive bioacoustic playback as a tool for detecting and exploring nonhuman intelligence: “conversing” with an alaskan humpback whale |
publisher |
PeerJ Inc. |
publishDate |
2023 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10693240/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/38047015 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.16349 |
genre |
Humpback Whale Alaska |
genre_facet |
Humpback Whale Alaska |
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PeerJ |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10693240/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/38047015 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.16349 |
op_rights |
© 2023 McCowan et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited. |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.16349 |
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11 |
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e16349 |
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