Wolf Howling Is Mediated by Relationship Quality Rather Than Underlying Emotional Stress

摘要: While considerable research has addressed the function of animal vocalizations, proximate mechanisms driving call production remain surprisingly unclear. Vocalizations may be driven by emotions and physiological state evoked changes in social-ecological environment [1, 2], or animals have more control over their using them flexible ways mediated animal’s understanding its surrounding social world [3, 4]. both explanations are plausible neither excludes other, to date no study attempted experimentally investigate influence emotional cognitive factors on vocal usage. We aimed disentangle relative contribution examining howling captive wolves. Using a separation experiment measuring cortisol levels, we specifically investigated whether is stress response group fragmentation [5] it factors, particularly relationship quality [6, 7]. Results showed that between howler leaving individual better predicted than did current state. Our findings shed important light degree which can considered as voluntary.