Abstract
Pig vocalisations convey information about their current state of health and welfare. Continuously monitoring these vocalisations can provide useful information for the farmer. For instance, pig screams can indicate stressful situations. When monitoring screams, other sounds can interfere with scream detection. Therefore, identifying screams from other sounds is essential. The objective of this study was to understand which sound features define a scream. Therefore, a method to detect screams based on sound features with physical meaning and explicit rules was developed. To achieve this, 7 hours of labelled data from 24 pigs was used. The developed detection method attained 72% sensitivity, 91% specificity and 83% precision. As a result, the detection method showed that screams contain the following features discerning them from other sounds: a formant structure, adequate power, high frequency content, sufficient variability and duration.
Highlights
Animal vocalisations can contain information such as signalling threats [1], choosing mates [2] or alerting infants for suckling [3]
High frequency calls of pigs have already been linked to stressful situations [7]
The purpose of this study is to investigate what sound features define a pig scream as a pig scream and how they differ from other sounds in a pig barn
Summary
Animal vocalisations can contain information such as signalling threats [1], choosing mates [2] or alerting infants for suckling [3]. In case of livestock animals, information contained in vocalisations or other animals sounds could serve as valuable information for the farmer. High frequency calls of pigs have already been linked to stressful situations [7]. Animal sounds such as coughs could be linked to respiratory diseases and to their welfare [8,9]. In the past numerous research studies on pig vocalisations in stressful situations have focussed on analysing high frequency calls
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