Abstract
Animal acoustic communication research depends on our ability to record the vocal behaviour of different species. Only rarely do we have the opportunity to continuously follow the vocal behaviour of a group of individuals of the same species for a long period of time. Here, we provide a database of Egyptian fruit bat vocalizations, which were continuously recorded in the lab in several groups simultaneously for more than a year. The dataset includes almost 300,000 files, a few seconds each, containing social vocalizations and representing the complete vocal repertoire used by the bats in the experiment period. Around 90,000 files are annotated with details about the individuals involved in the vocal interactions, their behaviours and the context. Moreover, the data include the complete vocal ontogeny of pups, from birth to adulthood, in different conditions (e.g., isolated or in a group). We hope that this comprehensive database will stimulate studies that will enhance our understanding of bat, and mammal, social vocal communication.
Highlights
Background & SummaryComparative research of nonhuman animals can potentially shed light on the evolution of language and speech[1]
The study of animal vocal communication may reveal the roots of syntax and semantics[2,3]
Nonhuman vocalizations are often cryptic to a human observer, and with little prior knowledge about the animal-relevant acoustics, identifying essential information in them becomes an arduous task
Summary
Comparative research of nonhuman animals can potentially shed light on the evolution of language and speech[1]. The study of animal vocal communication may reveal the roots of syntax and semantics[2,3]. Being social animals which almost exclusively interact with each other in the dark, and together with the versatile vocal skills found in this group (e.g., refs 14,15), bats make an interesting model for vocal communication studies. The dataset includes vocalizations of bats which were born inside the experimental setup, and recorded from birth to adulthood, under different experimental conditions (in isolation or in a group). This collection enables the tracking of the vocal ontogeny of bat pups[13]. The presented rich dataset can be potentially used to enhance our understanding of the origins of semantics (as in ref. 17), the ontogeny of a mammalian vocal communication (as in ref. 13), or even the putative use of syntax, as was observed, for instance, in courtship songs of birds[18,19] and songs of a few bat species[7,20]
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