Fig 1.
Spectrogram illustrating seven call types produced by adult (male and female) cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus) in captivity.
A–purr, B–hiss, C–growl, D–chirr, E–meow, F–chirp, G–howl (S1 Audio). The spectrogram was created at 11025 Hz sampling frequency, Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) 1024, Hamming window, frame 50%, overlap 93.75%.
Fig 2.
Measured variables for cheetah meows.
Spectrogram (right) and mean power spectrum of the entire call (left). Designations: duration–call duration; f0 beg–the fundamental frequency at the onset of a call; f0 end–the fundamental frequency at the end of a call; f0 max–the maximum fundamental frequency; f0 min–the minimum fundamental frequency; f peak–the frequency of maximum amplitude within a call; q25, q50 q75 –the lower, the medium and the upper quartiles, covering respectively 25%, 50% and 75% energy of a call spectrum. The spectrogram was created at 11025 Hz sampling frequency, Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) 512, Hamming window, frame 50%, overlap 96.87%.
Table 1.
Values (mean±SD) of acoustic variables for the cheetah call types.
Table 2.
Values (mean±SD) of acoustic variables for the cheetah purr inspiration and expiration phases.
Table 3.
Call context-specificity: the percent of calls given in each of context, context-specific calls (i.e., for which > 65%) are indicated in bold.
Table 4.
Call signal-specificity: the percent of 7 call types given in each context, signal-specific calls (i.e., those for which > 65% are given in a single context) are indicated in bold.
Table 5.
Values (meanSD) of the cheetah meow variables and results of nested ANOVA for individual and sex differences.
Fig 3.
Sex and individual discrimination of the cheetah meows.
Green bars indicate values of discriminant function analysis and yellow bars indicate random values, calculated with the randomization procedure. Comparisons between observed and random values with permutation tests are shown above the bars.
Fig 4.
Discrimination of individual cheetahs by meows in two years (2012 and 2014).
Green bars indicate values of discriminant function analysis and yellow bars indicate random values, calculated with a randomization procedure. Comparisons between observed and random values with permutation tests and comparisons between 2012 and 2014 meows with χ2 tests are shown by brackets above the bars. The red bar indicates the classification value of 2014 meows with discriminant functions created for meows recorded in 2012.