Daphne Hudson

Date of Award

2013

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Andrews, Anthony

Keywords

Red Ruffed Lemur, Vocal Repertoire, Vocalization

Area of Concentration

Anthropology

Abstract

The unusual vocalizations of our nonhuman primate relatives have long fascinated anthropologists and primatologists. To understand what these animals communicate, researchers have recorded and played back the calls of many species of primate. In the summer of 2012, I embarked on a five week study of five male captive red ruffed lemurs (Varecia rubra) in order to create a behavioral vocal repertoire for this species. During this short study, I recorded 977 vocalizations and grouped over 800 of these into ten definitive categories: the bray, chatter, growl, growl-snort, grunt, mew, pulsed squawk, roar-shriek chorus, sniff, and squeal. A comparison of the contexts of these calls to the contexts of the closely related black-and-white ruffed lemur (Varecia variegata) revealed marked similarities and differences. Though I was able to confidently assign a function or context to most of these calls, I believe the results of this work would benefit from a year-long study of these lemurs.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida Libraries, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

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