IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0014115.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Structure of Rat Ultrasonic Vocalizations and Its Relevance to Behavior

Author

Listed:
  • Nobuaki Takahashi
  • Makio Kashino
  • Naoyuki Hironaka

Abstract

Rats are known to emit ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs). These USVs have been hypothesized to hold biological meaning, and the relationship between USVs and behavior has been extensively studied. However, most of these studies looked at specific conditions, such as fear-inducing situations and sexual encounters. In the present experiment, the USVs of pairs of rats in ordinary housing conditions were recorded and their features were examined. Three clusters of USVs in the 25-, 40-, and 60-kHz range were detected, which roughly corresponded to fighting, feeding, and moving, respectively. We analyzed sequential combinations of two or more clusters using a state transition model. The results revealed a more specific correspondence between the USVs and behaviors, suggesting that rat USV may work as a type of communication tool.

Suggested Citation

  • Nobuaki Takahashi & Makio Kashino & Naoyuki Hironaka, 2010. "Structure of Rat Ultrasonic Vocalizations and Its Relevance to Behavior," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 5(11), pages 1-7, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0014115
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0014115
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0014115
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0014115&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0014115?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0014115. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.