The songs of mice

Palinurus

The Living Force
At first glance I took this to be an April Fools day joke but ensuing research learned me it's all for real -- too elaborate to be just a prank.

Source: _http://today.duke.edu/2015/04/mousesong (Bolds, mine)

Mice Sing Like Songbirds to Woo Mates

New statistical tool helps analyze songs of mice in hot pursuit

Durham, NC - April 1, 2015


https://youtu.be/ZS4Chf9yh8s
A Male mouse sings loud and complex song when eligible bachelorette is nearby but not sighted.
When he's in her presence, he sings more quietly and simply. Credit - Jonathan Chabout, Duke University


Male mice sing surprisingly complex songs to seduce females, sort of like songbirds, according to a new Duke study appearing April 1 in the Frontiers of Behavioral Neuroscience.
[ _http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnbeh.2015.00076/abstract ]

For more than 50 years, it has been known that mice sing. That is, they emit what’s called ‘ultrasonic vocalizations’ or USVs, sounds so high-pitched that people can’t hear them.

These vocalizations are known to occur in the wild when a mouse pup calls for its mother. And USVs grow more complex as mice reach adulthood. But researchers are still trying to decode the songs and determine how they vary across different social situations.

The new results add to evidence suggesting that although mice have a more limited ability to modify their songs than songbirds, they may be useful in research to understand some features of vocal communication and communication disorders, said co-corresponding author Erich Jarvis, an associate professor of neurobiology at Duke University and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.

Duke postdoctoral fellow Jonathan Chabout exposed adult male mice to different social contexts, and, in collaboration with David Dunson and Abhra Sarkar in Duke’s Department of Statistical Science, developed a new computational approach for analyzing mouse songs.

Informed by their analyses of male songbirds' courtship songs, the team studied the dynamics between the various syllables in a given mouse song, defined as a series of utterances or syllables strung together, sometimes with a tempo.

Song_jarvis_small.jpg

After smelling the urine of a female mouse, a male mouse starts to call to her using a complex string of utterances (depicted in the sonogram which shows frequency of sound over time). Researchers think that such songs give way to simpler tunes after the male is in the physical presence of the female. Photo credit – Jonathan Chabout, Duke University

The team found that males sing more complex songs -- and louder -- when they smell a female’s urine but don’t see her. By comparison, the songs are longer and simpler when the males sing directly to the female in her presence.

“We think this has something to do with the complex song being like a calling song, and then when he sees the female, he switches to a simpler song in order to save energy to chase and try to court her at the same time,” said Jarvis, who is also a member of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences.

“It was surprising to me how much change occurs to these songs in different social contexts, when the songs are thought to be innate,” Jarvis added. “It is clear that the mouse’s ability to vocalize is a lot more limited than a songbird’s or human’s, and yet it's remarkable that we can find these differences in song complexity.”

Within a given song, the mice produce specific patterns rather than random strings of syllables, Chabout said.

But what did the female mice think of this?

Most female mice prefer spending time by speakers playing the complex tunes. The fact that the females reacted differently to the different songs further strengthens the group’s conclusion that these various calls carry meaning, Chabout said.

The scientists plan to investigate the role of various genes and brain areas in the songs.

The researchers aren't sure yet how much the mice can learn to modify their songs rather than choosing among fixed patterns. Jarvis said the answer will be important for the study of autism spectrum disorders, characterized in part by deficits in social communication and, presumably, in brain circuits that control learned behavior.

“That’s why we and other scientists from all over the globe are studying mice to test the limits of vocal learning and plasticity,” Jarvis said.

The researchers uploaded their recordings to “MouseTube,” a growing repository built by scientists at the Institute Pasteur in Paris that is expected to contain USVs from around the world, across different strains and in different experimental contexts. (The particular mouse that scientists used in the new study they already knew to be more vocal than others.)
[ _https://mousetube.pasteur.fr/ ]


https://youtu.be/-0HTEXEnwSc


“We hope to help other researchers study USVs,” Chabout said. “And we bring a new way of looking at them dynamically.”

The new method, Mouse Song Analyzer v1.3, and an Excel-based song analysis tool, are freely available on the Jarvis lab website (_http://jarvislab.net/research/mouse-vocal-communication/).

This research was supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Who would've thought of that ! :lol:
 
I read that the females have the ability to distinguish related males than those who do not by their songs, fascinating, to me it sounded like usually squeal, and actually love serenade :)
 
As mice, spiders create the sounds of love, also.
Quote from the article:

"Scientists have revealed the musical, flirtatious side of a common spider.
They played the small spiders' call to females, revealing that they used leaves to transmit sound.
The researchers think this could provide clues about the earliest evolution of sound-based communication.
Using scent cues from females, the researchers were able to trigger small wolf spiders to purr, and the sound they make by dragging a special comb-like "stridulatory authority" across the surface they are on.
They then recorded and played back the sound that female spiders. This ensured that the females were exposed only to the airborne sound, rather than the physical vibrations produced the males. "
Link:
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-32845010
 
Thanks for sharing, casper. What struck me most is this:

article said:
They then recorded and played back the sound to female spiders. This ensured that the females were exposed only to the airborne sound, rather than the physical vibrations the males produced.

This revealed that the serenade would only work - both for the source and the recipient - if the spiders were on leaf-like surfaces that vibrated easily.

"We found that it's the substrate itself that's responsible for the airborne component of the sound," said Mr Sweger.

"On granite or wood or dirt, you get little to no vibration and almost no sound.

"But on a leaf, or paper or parchment, you get vibration and you get the airborne sound."

Female spiders, Prof Uetz told BBC News, "pick up vibrations - so the sound is transmitted to them from leaf to leaf".

Spiders have special sensory organs in their legs, Prof Uetz explained. "They're called sensillae; they're sort of in their knees - that's how they hear."

So, no room for 'weak knees' among those spiders... !! ;D
 
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