Elsevier

Animal Behaviour

Volume 35, Issue 1, February 1987, Pages 7-12
Animal Behaviour

Aggressive howling in wolves

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0003-3472(87)80204-XGet rights and content

Abstract

During two studies that investigated the responses of wolf packs to either human simulations or pre-recorded playbacks of wolf, Canis lupus, howling, single adult wolves from five different packs approached my location and howled on a total of six occasions. The howls uttered by these close-approaching wolves were significnatly deeper in pitch than comparable samples of howls recorded from animals that did not approach. In addition, howls of two of the five animals differed in structure from most of the other howls recorded during both studies. These close-approach howls were characterized by the presence of harmonically unrelated frequency sidebands near the end of the howl. This feature was rate in howls recorded during occasions when wolves kept their distance. These results indicate that the structure of wolf howling during aggressive interactions with strange wolves follows Morton's (1977) motivation-structural rules, which state that natural selection will favour the use of low-frequency, harsh sounds by hostile animals. This relationship follows from the physical constraints of vocal production: animals of larger size can produce sounds of lower pitch and harsher tonal quality. As body size is a primary determinant in the outcome of aggressive interactions, vocalizations signalling size (i.e.low-pitched, harsh sounds) will be of selective value for individuals engaged in aggressive interactions.

References (17)

  • HarringtonF.H. et al.

    Wolf vocalization

  • Clutton-BrockT.H. et al.

    The roaring of red deer and the evolution of honest advertisement

    Behaviour

    (1979)
  • ColliasN.E.

    An ecological and functional classification of animal sounds

  • DaviesN.B. et al.

    Deep croaks and fighting assessment in toads Bufo bufo

    Nature, Lond.

    (1978)
  • HarringtonF.H.

    To howl or not to howl? How wolves keep their distance

  • HarringtonF.H. et al.

    Wolf howling and its role in territory maintenance

    Behaviour

    (1979)
  • HarringtonF.H. et al.

    Wolf pack spacing: howling as a territory-independent spacing mechanism in a territorial population

    Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol.

    (1983)
  • MarlerP. et al.
There are more references available in the full text version of this article.

Cited by (49)

  • Elevated recognition accuracy for low-pitched male voices in men with higher threat potential: Further evidence for the retaliation-cost model in humans

    2021, Evolution and Human Behavior
    Citation Excerpt :

    Signals of aggressive-intent abound in animals. Examples include skin-darkening of cuttlefish and octopuses (Adamo & Hanlon, 1996; Scheel, Godfrey-Smith, & Lawrence, 2016), the postural and weaponry displays by hermit crabs and goldfinches (Laidre, 2009; Popp, 1987), song-type matching by song sparrows (Vehrencamp, 2001), soft calls of swamp sparrows (Akçay, Anderson, Nowicki, Beecher, & Searcy, 2015), low-pitched howling in wolves (Harrington, 1987), musth in African elephants (Poole, 1989), and the “rounded-mouth threat face” of macaques (Kuester, Paul, & Preuschoft, 1998). The wide distribution of aggressive-intent signals suggests that they are honest on average (otherwise, animals would not respond to them and the signals would disappear), and one possible mechanism that has maintained their honesty is retaliation cost (Searcy & Nowicki, 2005).

  • Using acoustic indices to estimate wolf pack size

    2019, Ecological Indicators
    Citation Excerpt :

    Additionally, a SNR measurement of the files containing a known number of wolves could be made in order to applying a correction to the estimation of howling wolves related to these SNR values. Finally, not all pack members participate in choruses (Harrington, 1987) and they could be temporarily and/or spatially separated from each other (Holt, 1998), so it is important to emphasize that the chorus size estimated using acoustic indices is not an exact estimate of the wolf pack size. In order to maximize the likelihood of recording choruses containing all pack members, summer is the best period for obtaining field recordings because of the high and frequent howling activity (Gazzola et al., 2002; Harrington and Mech, 1979) in restricted areas called “rendezvous sites” during pup rearing (Harrington and Mech, 1978).

  • Disentangling canid howls across multiple species and subspecies: Structure in a complex communication channel

    2016, Behavioural Processes
    Citation Excerpt :

    Most are apex predators, and although some hunt in packs and others alone, all species are strongly social, living in groups ranging in size from a handful of close family members, e.g. coyotes Canis latrans (Bekoff, 1977), to large groups of 20 or more animals, e.g. Ethiopian wolves Canis simensis (Sillero-Zubiri and Gottelli, 1994). For humans, one of the most familiar canid behaviours is the howl, a long-range communication channel (i.e., a mode through which communication can occur) thought to play a role both in territorial advertising and in group cohesion (Theberge and Falls 1967; Harrington and Mech, 1979; Harrington, 1987). Howling is most familiar in grey wolves Canis lupus (Harrington et al., 2003), but all species in the genus produce howl-like vocalisations in addition to other, shorter range communication, such as barks, yips, and growls (Cohen and Fox, 1976).

  • Behavioural and physiological responses of domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) to agonistic growls from conspecifics

    2014, Applied Animal Behaviour Science
    Citation Excerpt :

    As Morton (1977) states, “Harsh, low-frequency sounds indicate that the sender is likely to attack if the receiver comes closer to the sender or remains at the same distance.” This relationship between acoustic structure of a vocalisation and an aggressive motivational context has been supported in numerous studies (e.g. Harrington, 1987; Gouzoules and Gouzoules, 2000; Compton et al., 2001; Feighny et al., 2006). However, an assumption behind this rule, that the receiver will avoid or retreat from the sender in response to the vocalisation's acoustic structure (i.e. wide bandwidth and low frequency), has largely been unexplored.

  • Are higher-frequency sounds brighter in color and smaller in size? Auditory-visual correspondences in 10-month-old infants

    2012, Infant Behavior and Development
    Citation Excerpt :

    Thus, the results of the present and previous research suggest that pitch-size correspondences may be learned after birth. This observation may be surprising considering that some animal species (e.g., frogs, wolves) use vocalization frequency to make their apparent body size larger (e.g., Bee, Perrill, & Owen, 2000; Harrington, 1987). They produce lower-frequency vocal sounds in the presence rather than in the absence of competitive conspecifics.

View all citing articles on Scopus
View full text