It is unclear why we are tempted to listen in on private conversations, but being ‘nosey’ may actually have some long term benefits. Researchers from the University of Bristol and the Australian National University at Canberra reviewed experiments that studied how animals of one species listens to and responds to heterospecific alarm calls and how eavesdropping poses long-term benefits for its survival.
Eavesdropping is a way in which animals can gather information from signals that were intended for another species. Researchers sought to examine the benefits and mechanisms of eavesdropping on other species’ alarm calls (Magrath et. al, 2014). In order to investigate this, they reviewed experimental data collected from over 70 vertebrate species’ responses to the playback of heterospecific and conspecific alarm calls. Using the data, they inferred that there were immediate anti-predator benefits. For example, superb fairy-wrens who were played the alarm calls of several different species immediately fled for cover in response. Another example was observed in ground squirrels who fled for refuge after hearing the alarm call of another species. Moreover, researchers further deduced that there may be indirect and long term benefits to eavesdropping on heterospecific alarm calls such as: reduced vigilance, increased foraging success, or gained spatial information on the location of predators.
Despite the wealth of research examining the benefits of eavesdropping in animals, the mechanisms that allow animals to recognize the alarm calls of other species is not well understood. Researchers propose that recognizing conspecific alarm calls is innate. Thus, allowing animals to generalize acoustically similar heterospecific alarm calls.
Research focused on the mechanisms underlying the discernment of heterospecific alarm calls are still underway, and the benefits it poses in animals are clear, but what does this mean for humans? Considering that animals use eavesdropping as a way to gather information about their surroundings, one could infer that humans are tempted to do so not because they are ‘nosey’, but because they also have developed this adaptation for gathering information about its surroundings that could potentially save its life.
Magrath, R. D., Haff, T. M., Fallow, P. M., & Radford, A. N. (2014). Eavesdropping on heterospecific alarm calls: from mechanisms to consequences. Biological Reviews, 90(2), 560-586. doi:10.1111/brv.12122
Eman Khwaja
November 9, 2017 — 1:14 am
That’s really interesting and a great use of resources! I know that if some individuals give too many false alarm calls then others stop believing them, so it would be interesting to see if a species as a whole would stop listening to the alarm calls of another species they used for anti-predator tactics because of too many false signals!