"She ha thi thing where he goe to a movie theater, watching a horror movie and there wa a wolf howling in the background.” Univerity of Cambridge zoologit Arik Kerhenbaum, talking about hi collaborator Holly Root-Gutteridge, a biologit at Syracue Univerity. She aid to herelf, ‘Well, that' wrong. That' clearly a European wolf and not a North American wolf like it hould be in the cene.'"
Slight variation in the way we peak allow u to tell whether omeone i from Boton or New York jut by litening to them. The ame turn out to be true for the animal known a canid, which include wolve, dog and coyote. They all howl to communicate—but thoe howl vary. Canid can tell which howl belong to their known aociate and which belong to tranger.
So Kerhenbaum and Root-Gutteridge decided to categorize the howl of different canid around the world. Together with colleague, they compiled recording of more than 2,000 canid howl, including European wolve, Mexican wolve, arctic wolve, dingoe, coyote, golden jackal, dometic dog, New Guinea inging dog, and more. A computer program orted the howl into different type. The tudy wa publihed in the journal Behavioral Procee. [Arik Kerhenbaum et al, Dientangling canid howl acro multiple pecie and ubpecie: Structure in a complex communication channel]WWw.hAOZUowEn.com
Baed on the analyi, canid ue 21 different kind of howl to communicate. If you think of the howl a word, then all canid have the ame vocabulary—but each pecie or ub-pecie ha it own unique dialect. Some word are more common in one dialect, while other word are more common in another dialect and o on. By matching dialect with pecie and geography, reearcher could monitor endangered pecie, like red wolve, jut by litening.
AK: "Being able to ditinguih between the howl of a coyote and the howl of a red wolf open the poibility for technique of paive monitoring, paive population monitoring, uing acoutic."
Meanwhile, rancher have tried to broadcat pecific howl to dicourage grey wolve from feating on their livetock, but it' never been ucceful.
AK: "Becaue we don't really know what meage we're conveying to the wolve when we play back an arbitrary howl. For all we know, we could be playing back a howl that mean come and eat, there' lot of intereting food over here."
The reearch could thu finally bring peace to the conflict between rancher and wolve, by finally peaking to the predator in their own language.
—Jaon G. Goldman