BioAcoustica is a free, open repository of wildlife sound recordings from the Natural History Museum, London.
Taxonomic index of the BioAcoustica collection
Acoustic and biological measurements in the BioAcoustica collection
Recording annotations from ann-o-mate
The specimens that recordings are of, from the collections
Hrouzková, Ema; Bernasová, Eliška; Šklíba, Jan (2019). Eavesdropping on a heterospecific alarm call in the giant root-rat (Tachyorytes macrocephalus), an important prey of the Ethiopian wolf (Canis simensis).
The giant root-rat of the Bale Mountains, Ethiopia has been reported to have a mutualistic relationship with a passerine, which involves eavesdropping on its alarm call. We tested this in a field playback experiment. Besides the alarm call, we included two sounds potentially acting as alarm cues and one as a control. Little reaction of root-rats was detected to the bird alarm call. However, intensive reaction was detected to an alarm call of the black-clawed brush-furred rat, a social rodent often occupying root-rats’ burrows. This result is understandable given the two rodents have the same principal predator, the Ethiopian wolf.
| Moorland Chat Alarm Call | Cercomela sordida |
| Moorland chat wing whistle | Cercomela sordida |
| Black-clawed brush-furred rat alarm call | Lophuromys melanonyx |
| Ethiopian siskin song | Serinus nigriceps |
| Cercomela sordida |
| Cercomela sordida |
| Cercomela sordida |
| Lophuromys melanonyx |
| Lophuromys melanonyx |
| Serinus nigriceps |
| Serinus nigriceps |
| Tachyoryctes macrocephalus |
Where the specimens that recordings are of were collected, not where the sound was recorded