Ethology Functionally Referential Alarm Calls in Tamarins (Saguinus fuscicollis and Saguinus mystax) – Evidence from Playback Experiments Janna Kirchhof* & Kurt Hammerschmidt * Department of Neurobiology Cognitive Ethology, German Primate Center, Kellnerweg 4, Go¨ ttingen, Germany Correspondence Abstract Kurt Hammerschmidt, Cognitive Ethology, German Primate Center, Kellnerweg 4, 37077 Studies on primate vocalisation have revealed different types of alarm Go¨ ttingen, Germany. call systems ranging from graded signals based on response urgency to E-mail:
[email protected] functionally referential alarm calls that elicit predator-specific reactions. In addition, alarm call systems that include both highly specific and Received: December 9, 2004 other more unspecific calls have been reported. There has been consis- Initial acceptance: April 3, 2005 tent discussion on the possible factors leading to the evolution of differ- Final acceptance: June 26, 2005 (L. Sundstro¨ m) ent alarm call systems, among which is the need of qualitatively doi: 10.1111/j.1439-0310.2006.01165.x different escape strategies. We studied the alarm calls of free-ranging saddleback and moustached tamarins (Saguinus fuscicollis and Saguinus mystax) in northeast Peru. Both species have predator-specific alarm calls and show specific non-vocal reactions. In response to aerial predators, they look upwards and quickly move downwards, while in response to terrestrial predators, they look downwards and sometimes approach the predator. We conducted playback experiments to test if the predator- specific reactions could be elicited in the absence of the predator by the tamarins’ alarm calls alone. We found that in response to aerial alarm call playbacks the subjects looked significantly longer upwards, and in response to terrestrial alarm call playbacks they looked significantly longer downwards.