close
Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2012 Aug 23;8(4):508-11.
doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2011.1149. Epub 2012 Feb 8.

Primate communication in the pure ultrasound

Marissa A Ramsier  1 , Andrew J Cunningham, Gillian L Moritz, James J Finneran, Cathy V Williams, Perry S Ong, Sharon L Gursky-Doyen, Nathaniel J Dominy
Affiliations

Primate communication in the pure ultrasound

Marissa A Ramsier et al. Biol Lett. .

Abstract

Few mammals-cetaceans, domestic cats and select bats and rodents-can send and receive vocal signals contained within the ultrasonic domain, or pure ultrasound (greater than 20 kHz). Here, we use the auditory brainstem response (ABR) method to demonstrate that a species of nocturnal primate, the Philippine tarsier (Tarsius syrichta), has a high-frequency limit of auditory sensitivity of ca 91 kHz. We also recorded a vocalization with a dominant frequency of 70 kHz. Such values are among the highest recorded for any terrestrial mammal, and a relatively extreme example of ultrasonic communication. For Philippine tarsiers, ultrasonic vocalizations might represent a private channel of communication that subverts detection by predators, prey and competitors, enhances energetic efficiency, or improves detection against low-frequency background noise.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Philippine tarsier and its auditory and acoustic capabilities. (a) Tarsius syrichta in its natural habitat, Mindanao, Philippines. (b) Representative ABR waveform series for 45 kHz stimuli. (c) Average audiogram and standard error of six individuals; the high-frequency limit was extrapolated from the thresholds at 45 and 64 kHz. (d) Spectrogram of vocalization shows the call duration (approx. 650 ms) and dominant frequency (approx. 70 kHz); signal intensity is represented by the density of the red–black scale (hear electronic supplementary material, sound file S1, available online).
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
The 60 dB high-frequency limits of strepsirrhine and haplorhine primates. Boxes represent the interquartile range between the first and third quartiles and the line inside represents the median. Whiskers denote the lowest and highest values, excepting Tarsius syrichta. At ca 91 kHz, T. syrichta is substantially higher than other primate species [1,23,24].
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Coleman M. N. 2009. What to primates really hear? A meta-analysis of all known primate behavioral audiograms. Int. J. Primatol. 30, 55–91 10.1007/s10764-008-9330-1 (doi:10.1007/s10764-008-9330-1) - DOI
    1. Kantha S. S., Koda H., Suzuki J. 2009. Owl monkey vocalizations at the Primate Research Institute, Inuyama. Neotrop. Primates 16, 43–46 10.1896/044.016.0110 (doi:10.1896/044.016.0110) - DOI
    1. Pola Y. V., Snowdon C. T. 1975. The vocalizations of pygmy marmosets (Cebuella pygmaea). Anim. Behav. 23, 825–842 10.1016/0003-3472(75)90108-6 (doi:10.1016/0003-3472(75)90108-6) - DOI - PubMed
    1. Zimmerman E. 1981. First record of ultrasound in two prosimian species. Naturwissenschaften 68, 531–532 10.1007/BF00365388 (doi:10.1007/BF00365388) - DOI
    1. Cherry J. A., Izard M. K., Simons E. 1987. Description of ultrasonic vocalizations of the mouse lemur (Microcebus murinus) and the fat-tailed dwarf lemur (Cheirogaleus medius). Am. J. Primatol. 13, 181–185 10.1002/ajp.1350130208 (doi:10.1002/ajp.1350130208) - DOI - PubMed

Publication types