title: Dogs discriminate between barks: the effect of context and identity of the caller.
abstract: In the present study we explored whether dogs (Canis familiaris) are able to discriminate between conspecific barks emitted in different contexts recorded either from the same or different individuals. Playback experiments were conducted with dogs using barks as stimuli in a habituation-dishabituation paradigm. Barks were recorded in two contexts (stranger at the fence and when the dog was left alone) from different individuals. We found that dogs distinguished between barks emitted in these two contexts and were also able to discriminate between different individuals which were barking in the same context. These findings suggest that dog bark may carry context- and individual-specific information for the conspecifics.
authors: Department of Ethology, Eötvös Loránd University, H-1117 Budapest, Pázmány Péter sétány 1/C, Hungary.
authors: Csaba
authors: C
authors: Molnár
authors: Péter
authors: P
authors: Pongrácz
authors: Tamás
authors: T
authors: Faragó
authors: Antal
authors: A
authors: Dóka
authors: Adám
authors: A
authors: Miklósi
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001307:Auditory Perception; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D004285:Dogs / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D008297:Male; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D013018:Sound Spectrography / Q000662:veterinary; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D014828:Vocalization, Animal / Q000502:physiology*