Vocal development in small-bodied mammals: a comparison between grey mouse lemurs (Primates) and Etruscan shrews (Eulipotyphla)
Human infants acquire their language through a period of vocal plasticity termed babbling, with similar phenomena described in other non-human mammals. To get insight into the evolution of babbling, I intent to investigate to which extent features of human babbling are present in primates, represented by grey mouse lemurs, and non-primate mammals, represented by Etruscan shrews. Multivariate statistical methods will thereby be applied to describe and compare vocal repertoires and syllable types across different age classes for each species. At the same time, the existence of vocal signatures for mother-infant recognition will be investigated, while the impact of genetic relatedness, maturation, age, sex and arousal on individual vocal signatures will be explored.
