Vocal recognition of offspring, , mother, sex or age class, , group membership, , individual identity, and the dominant or subordinate status of males have been previously described in many socially living mammals.Īcoustic signals may also serve as a premating isolating mechanism and restrict reproduction between different species. Advanced acoustic communication might therefore be particularly useful for the white rhinoceros. The most frequently observed long-term associations of southern white rhinos include 2–3 individuals, although long-lasting groupings of up to six animals have also been recorded. Adult white rhinoceros males are territorial while females, subadults and juveniles live in groups in overlapping home-ranges. White rhinos have the widest vocal repertoire out of all the rhinoceros species whose vocalizations have been studied bioacoustically (see – ) and also have the most developed social system (see – ). To the best of our knowledge, however, only basic descriptions of the rhinoceros vocal repertoire are known so far and no studies have reported any detailed information encoded in particular rhinoceros calls –. It has been hypothesised that rhinos might be using infrasound for long-distance communication which would be similar to the communication of elephants. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.Ĭertain aspects of rhinoceros acoustic communication have been compared to the communication of elephants intensively studied over recent decades (e.g. The participation of RP was supported by the Internal Grant Agency of the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague CIGA 20115005 (51120/1313/3104). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.įunding: The project was financially supported by the Internal Grant Agency of the Palacký University in Olomouc PRF 2014-018, by the mobility grants from the Palacký University to IC and by the Internal Grant Agency of the Faculty of Forestry and Wood Sciences, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague (no. Received: DecemAccepted: Published: June 5, 2014Ĭopyright: © 2014 Cinková, Policht.
PLoS ONE 9(6):Įditor: Nicolas Mathevon, University of Saint-Etienne, France A better understanding of communication of white rhinos has potential practical use in their management and conservation particularly because of the low breeding success of white rhinos in captivity.Ĭitation: Cinková I, Policht R (2014) Contact Calls of the Northern and Southern White Rhinoceros Allow for Individual and Species Identification. The ability to recognize this information would allow rhinos, in addition to olfactory cues, to communicate with highly increased accuracy. Our results show that pant calls carry information about individual, species, age class and context. We also analysed the pant calls of southern white rhinos for the differences between the age classes and between social contexts in which they were recorded. Northern white rhinos had longer calls and also differed from the southern white rhinos in several frequency parameters of their calls. We found that pant calls varied by species. We calculated signature information capacity of pant calls recorded from adult animals in isolation at 3.19 bits for the northern white rhinos and at 3.15 bits for the southern white rhinos, which can potentially allow for a vocal discrimination of nine individuals of both species. Discriminant analyses revealed that a high percentage of the pant calls of both species could be classified to a correct individual. We recorded repetitive contact pant calls from six captive northern white rhinos ( Ceratotherium cottoni) and 14 captive and free-ranging southern white rhinos ( Ceratotherium simum) and examined if they transmit information about individual identity, species, social context and age class. White rhinos have the most developed social system out of all the rhinoceros species and vocal signals might therefore play an important role in their social interactions. Vocal and olfactory signals are the most important for the communication of rhinos, however, their vocal communication has been investigated to a very limited extent so far. Inter-individual relationships particularly in socially living mammals often require a well-developed communication system.
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