Dholes ~ Wild Dog Language Translated

Wild Dog Language Translated

By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News

Jan. 31, 2001 — Like speakers of an unknown foreign language, animals bark, growl, purr and whine without being completely understood by us.



But that may soon change: Scientists at the Moscow Zoo say they've translated some of the sounds of the dhole, an endangered wild dog whose territory extends from India to Southern Siberia.
Dholes live in remote mountainous regions and rarely encounter people, so the research provides rare information about the elusive animal and its language, dubbed "dholish."

Researchers Ilya Volodin and Elena Volodina of the Moscow Zoo and Irina Isaeva, a graduate student at Lomonosov Moscow State University, studied nine captive dholes at the zoo. They recorded sounds emitted by the animals and then created spectrograms, visual images of the sounds. The spectrograms that revealed dholes could produce two different sounds simultaneously, an ability known as biphonation.


A Standing Dhole

Tobias Riede, a specialist in biphonation at Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany, said most dogs, cats, elephants, sika deers and even humans also have this ability.

"Everybody can do it," said Riede. "Try whistling and make a sound with your larynx. Also remember Tom Waits, Janis Joplin, Bruce Springsteen and Diamanda Galas; they all enjoy those rough voices and produce biphonations."

Intrigued by the dholes' vocal ability, the researchers next video-recorded the animals and carefully observed how sounds matched behaviors. It was from this analysis that a dhole dictionary of sorts was created. Findings have been accepted for publication in the Russian Zoological Journal.

The scientists identified 11 basic dhole sounds: squeak, a biphonic yap-squeak, yap, whistle, bark, squeal, scream, whine, howl, grumble, and a staccato barking noise. Unlike human language, the meaning of these sounds depends upon the dhole's age, social status, health and living environment.

"For example, a dhole male will cry a whistling call if a female is separated because of problems with her health. This same call is produced by dhole parents and young who have become separated," Volodin explained.

An adult dhole that still lives with its father recognizes elder status by yapping like younger animals. Volodina and Isaeva said the same call, for infant dholes, means, "I'm hungry! Regurgitate me some food!"

Perhaps the most important sound occurs when a courting male produces a sweet, high-pitched call that Volodin and her colleagues translated as meaning, "He is not a big bad wolf, but is instead a good fellow that is kind and not dangerous."