Animal communication

Animal communication, process by which one animal provides information that other animals can incorporate into their decision making. The vehicle for the provision of this information is called a signal. The signal may be a sound, colour pattern, posture, movement, electrical discharge, touch, release of an odorant, or some combination of these mediums.

Animals face daily decisions about how to behave. Choices can be as simple as a sea anemone deciding when to expand its tentacles or as complex as a male lion deciding whether to approach a reluctant mate. The decision, which may be reflexive or conscious, is guided by evolutionary biases based on alternative outcomes of choice, recent experience about likely conditions, and sensory information. An animal with access to complete information can always choose correctly. However, life is rarely so accommodating, and inputs often fail to provide complete information. Thus, communication is an important source of additional information that is incorporated into the decision-making process.

Signals are actions or anatomical structures whose primary function is the provision of information to another animal. However, not all actions by one animal that provide information to another animal qualify as signals. The noise created by a foraging mouse and used by an owl to locate and kill the mouse is a case in point. Mice have to feed, and the noises they create while feeding (e.g., through movement and chewing) are an inadvertent result of that activity. Thus, these sounds are not a signal. In contrast, the song of a wren is not inadvertent—wrens sing solely to communicate with other birds.

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Senders and receivers

An animal that provides a signal is called a sender. The animal to which the signal is directed is the receiver. The receiver uses the signal information to help make a decision. For example, if a receiver must choose either to fight with or to flee from an opponent, it brings to this decision biases and thresholds passed on to it by successful prior generations. This information helps the receiver avoid harm and find food, shelter, and mates. Prior experience in the receiver’s own life may also play a role in shaping its evaluation of the situation. If it has routinely lost fights to larger animals, a useful strategy would be to assess the size of the opponent. This may be done by using vision or other means. For example, in some cases an opponent broadcasts a low-frequency sound signal at the receiver. Because only large animals can produce low-frequency sounds, this signal provides evidence that the opponent is large. The receiver integrates its perception of the sound frequency with its prior experience and inherited avoidance of harmful situations and thus decides to flee.

In this example, the receiver can interpret the signal only if it understands that low-frequency sounds tend to be associated with large body sizes. The association between alternative signals (e.g., sounds of different frequencies) and different alternative circumstances (e.g., relative sizes of opponents) is called a code. Codes can be characterized as probabilities that a sender will emit a given signal in any given circumstance. In a perfect code, only one signal will be used in a given context, and only one context will evoke that signal. Real codes do not need to be perfect, but they do need to be good enough that a receiver attending to signals makes better decisions than if it ignored the signals and relied only on other sources of information.

Animals differ widely in the mechanisms by which they acquire signal codes. Some codes are inherited genetically. For example, the sound-producing structures of many male insects generate a limited range of sound frequencies, and the ears of females are pretuned to be most sensitive to those frequencies. In other species, senders’ sounds or body odours are determined by random genetic processes, and receivers must learn which signals go with which individuals. Many songbirds have genetic limits on the range of sounds they can sing, but they can learn one or more local variants within those limits during a short period in their youth. In certain species, such as parrots or humans, both sender and receiver must learn the appropriate vocal coding, and they can continue to learn alternative coding systems throughout life.

Different contexts require different kinds of information and thus different signals. The number of signals in a species’ repertoire can range from 5 or 6 in the simplest nonsocial animals to 10–20 in social insects, such as bees and ants, or to 30–40 in social vertebrates, such as wolves and primates. Most animals produce signals to attract mates and then produce additional signals to synchronize mating. Signals for mediating conflicts, including signals of aggressive intention and signals of submission, are also widespread. In addition, territorial species require signals for declaring territory ownership, and in situations in which adults guard or feed their young, both parents and offspring require signals to coordinate parental care. Social animals may use signals to coordinate group movements, to assemble dispersed group members, or to display social affiliations. Some animals have special signals that they use to share food finds, to alert others about predator attacks, and even to alert approaching predators that they have been detected. In addition, bats, oilbirds, porpoises, and electric fish use the differences between their own emitted and subsequently received signals to extract information about the ambient environment. In many of these contexts, the relevant animal signals are designed to provide a receiver with ancillary information about the identity, sex, social affiliation, and location of the sender.

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