Practice question · Select all that apply
Which are true of vervet alarm calls as established by the playback experiments?
Hints
- Three describe what the experiments found; one attributes a capacity that was not demonstrated.
- Combining calls into new messages is productivity, which was not shown.
Show the answer
- A. Each call produces a different escape response
- B. The response occurs to the recorded call alone, with no predator present
- D. There are three acoustically distinct calls
Why
The playback design is what makes the first three convincing: the recorded call alone, with nothing in the sky or the grass, produces the specific response, so the animals are responding to the signal rather than to the predator. What was not found is any combination of calls into new messages.
Practise Animal Communication
The app has 5 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. Languages I is free to start.
More questions on Animal Communication
- A food source is placed directly above a beehive, reachable only by flying straight up. What happened in von…
- The honeybee waggle dance shows displacement, since it refers to a place the dancer is not at.
- Sort each observation by whether it supports a RICH interpretation of ape language studies or a SCEPTICAL one.
- How many acoustically distinct alarm calls did the vervet studies establish?
- Complete the comparison of systems.
- A communication system can show displacement without possessing productivity. What explains this divergence…
- Ape language studies are generally agreed to have demonstrated recursive, hierarchical syntax.