ArticleRoyal Society open science2020
Brevity is not a universal in animal communication: evidence for compression depends on the unit of analysis in small ape vocalizations.
Article in Royal Society open science, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 29 citations in OpenAlex.
- Dynamics of jaw kinematics and fundamental frequency suggest vocal tract tuning in the indris' song.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- Article
- Investigating Menzerath's law in crows and humans during cued vocal 'counting'.Animal cognition · 2026Article
- Does Zipf's law of abbreviation shape birdsong?PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Language-like efficiency in whale communication.Science advances · 2025Article
- Inter-call intervals, but not call durations, adhere to Menzerath's Law in the submissive vocal bouts of meerkats.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Article
- Linguistic law-like compression strategies emerge to maximize coding efficiency in marmoset vocal communication.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Variable expression of linguistic laws in ape gesture: a case study from chimpanzee sexual solicitation.Royal Society open science · 2022Article
- Compression principle and Zipf's Law of brevity in infochemical communication.Biology letters · 2022Article
- Linguistic laws in biology.Trends in ecology & evolution · 2022Review
- Linguistic laws of brevity: conformity in Indri indri.Animal cognition · 2021Article
- Adherence to Menzerath's Law is the exception (not the rule) in three duetting primate species.Royal Society open science · 2020Article
- An exploration of Menzerath's law in wild mountain gorilla vocal sequences.Biology letters · 2020Article
- Brevity is not a universal in animal communication: evidence for compression depends on the unit of analysis in small ape vocalizations.Royal Society open science · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Evidence for compression, or minimization of code length, has been found across biological systems from genomes to human language and music. Two linguistic laws-Menzerath's Law (which states that longer sequences consist of shorter constituents) and Zipf's Law of abbreviation (a negative relationship between signal length and frequency of use)-are predictions of compression. It has been proposed that compression is a universal in animal communication, but there have been mixed results, particularly in reference to Zipf's Law of abbreviation. Like songbirds, male gibbons (
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.