My current focus is on signals that can be perceived using more than one sensory modality, also known as multimodal signals. Many animals, including primates (humans and rhesus monkeys), spiders (wolf spiders and tropical wandering spiders), frogs (dart-poison frogs) and of course, gallinaceous birds (red jungle fowl and domestic fowl) communicate using multimodal signals. These signals occur in many different social situations, including courtship, aggressive encounters, and food sharing.
The multimodal signal I am most interested in is a food-related display called tidbitting, which male fowl, Gallus gallus, perform upon finding food in the presence of a female. The display is composed of coaxing, cluck-like calls and repeated bobbing and twitching motions of the head and neck. (Click here to see and hear an example of tidbitting.) During the performance, the male repeatedly picks up and drops the food item with his beak. The display usually ends when the hen takes the food item either from the ground or directly from the male’s beak.
Currently, we are characterizing the visual and vocal components of tidbitting and developing an in-depth understanding of how changes in these components affect receiver responses. We use high-speed filming and Analysis of Image Motion software (Mathworks Matlab) to quantify changes in the male’s movements over the course of the display. We then map these findings onto the vocal performance. With these cross-correlated results, we use a variety of techniques including high-definition video playback, 3D animations, and animatronics to address how variation in performance affects female behavior.
Multimodal Signals
Video of multimodal behavior
[Food calling and tidbitting male]
Sound spectrogram of food call
High-speed film &
sound analysis system