Predator presentation experiments are widely used to investigate animal alarm vocalizations. They usually involve presentations of predator models or playbacks of predator calls, but it remains unclear whether the two paradigms provide similar …
The emergent field of animal linguistics applies linguistics tools to animal data in order to investigate potential linguistic-like properties of their communication. One of these tools is the “Urgency Principle”, a pragmatic principle stating that …
Platyrrhini are highly vulnerable to the yellow fever (YF) virus. From 2016 to 2018, the Atlantic Forest of southeast Brazil faced its worst sylvatic YF outbreak in about a century, thought to have killed thousands of primates. It is essential to …
This project aims to study the vocal communication and the ecology of wild titi monkeys (Callicebus nigrifrons). To this end, we combine biological observations and experiments on the field to theoretical linguistic work.
Previous work suggested that titi monkeys *Callicebus nigrifrons* combine two alarm calls, the A- and B-calls, to communicate about predator type and location. To explore how listeners process these sequences, we recorded alarm call sequences of six …
Many primates produce one type of alarm call to a broad range of events, usually terrestrial predators and non-predatory situations, which raises questions about whether primate alarm calls should be considered ‘functionally referential’. A recent …