|
Exploring the Interior Structure of White-handed Gibbon Vocal Communication| old_uid | 15725 |
|---|
| title | Exploring the Interior Structure of White-handed Gibbon Vocal Communication |
|---|
| start_date | 2015/06/03 |
|---|
| schedule | 11h30-13h |
|---|
| online | no |
|---|
| summary | Imagine that an alien landed on Earth and heard a multitude of strange sounds coming from the planet's creatures. What would it make of this? Could it distinguish species based on their sounds? Perhaps all of Earth's animals would sound alike? Could it learn these auditory signals are forms of communication? How would it decipher them? What commonalities would it find among the varied inhabitants of this world? This talk examines how this kind of scenario can be addressed. We use a combination of machine learning, formal language theory, and signal processing to analyze vocalizations from wild and captive white-handed gibbons (Hylobates lar). This approach is a radical departure from traditional studies in animal vocalization, which rely on ad hoc analyses through human observation and manual signal manipulation. By combining linguistics, computer science, and information theory, we are able to gain new insights into the communicative abilities of white-handed gibbons and demonstrate previously unrecognized complexity and structure in their vocalizations. Our approach, called Cepstral Self-Similarity Matrices, enables automatic sequencing of gibbon vocalizations into their constituent acoustic units. We analyze these sequences using basic Ergodic theory to segment them into distinct subsequences that appear consistently and repeatedly across our gibbon populations in specific referential contexts. For example, predator alarm calls share basic properties, statistical acoustic unit distributions and overall structure but each displays unique sequences associated with a particular predator. We view these as semantic units within the calls identifying the predator, as opposed to behavioral exhortations intended to trigger responses within the social group. Finally, we propose new questions which may be addressed using the above approach. |
|---|
| responsibles | <not specified> |
|---|
| |
|