ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2014
Animal vocal sequences: not the Markov chains we thought they were.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 48 papers.
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Who cites it
48 citing papers in PubMed.
- Language-like properties in the vocal behavior of animals.Current opinion in neurobiology · 2026Review
- Measuring hierarchical structure across hominid percussive tool-use sequences.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Leopard seal song patterns have similar predictability to nursery rhymes.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Temporal organization of song modulates vocal learning.iScience · 2025Article
- Third-order self-embedded vocal motifs in wild orangutans, and the selective evolution of recursion.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2025Article
- Generative vocal plasticity in chimpanzees.iScience · 2025Article
- Vocal Learning Versus Speech Evolution: Untangling a False Equivalence.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Integrating multi-modal data fusion approaches for analysis of dairy cattle vocalizations.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2025Article
- Individual-specific associations between warble song notes and body movements in budgerigar courtship displays.Biology open · 2024Article
- Language-like efficiency and structure in house finch song.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Network analysis reveals context-dependent structural complexity of social calls in serrate-legged small treefrogs.Current zoology · 2024Article
- Article
- Open plains are not a level playing field for hominid consonant-like versus vowel-like calls.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Information Theory Opens New Dimensions in Experimental Studies of Animal Behaviour and Communication.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2023Review
- Multi-level combinatoriality in magpie non-song vocalizations.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2023Article
- Animal linguistics: a primer.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2023Article
- Higher-order sequences of vocal mimicry performed by male Albert's lyrebirds are socially transmitted and enhance acoustic contrast.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Long-range sequential dependencies precede complex syntactic production in language acquisition.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Long-distance dependencies in birdsong syntax.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- From collocations to call-ocations: using linguistic methods to quantify animal call combinations.Behavioral ecology and sociobiology · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Many animals produce vocal sequences that appear complex. Most researchers assume that these sequences are well characterized as Markov chains (i.e. that the probability of a particular vocal element can be calculated from the history of only a finite number of preceding elements). However, this assumption has never been explicitly tested. Furthermore, it is unclear how language could evolve in a single step from a Markovian origin, as is frequently assumed, as no intermediate forms have been found between animal communication and human language. Here, we assess whether animal taxa produce vocal sequences that are better described by Markov chains, or by non-Markovian dynamics such as the 'renewal process' (RP), characterized by a strong tendency to repeat elements. We examined vocal sequences of seven taxa: Bengalese finches Lonchura striata domestica, Carolina chickadees Poecile carolinensis, free-tailed bats Tadarida brasiliensis, rock hyraxes Procavia capensis, pilot whales Globicephala macrorhynchus, killer whales Orcinus orca and orangutans Pongo spp. The vocal systems of most of these species are more consistent with a non-Markovian RP than with the Markovian models traditionally assumed. Our data suggest that non-Markovian vocal sequences may be more common than Markov sequences, which must be taken into account when evaluating alternative hypotheses for the evolution of signalling complexity, and perhaps human language origins.
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