tity,gender,and emotion,is a sadly impoverished vehicle for social com-
munication.We must not fall into the trap of assuming that signal systems
that are not languagelike are necessarily impoverished as vehicles for
social communication.
Emotion-based calls are widespread in animals and may represent
the most typical condition;but some vocalizations do not fit neatly into
the GOP mold.The revisionist process began in earnest with descriptive
studies and later with experiments conducted in the field in Africa,on
the remarkably rich repertoire of alarm calls of the vervet monkey,
Cercopithecus aethiops,first described by Struhsaker (1967).A further
step was taken by playing taperecordings of alarm calls to free-ranging
vervets in the absence of any predators,in their natural habitat on the
edge of the rainforest (Seyfarth,Cheney,and Marler 1980a,b).The
monkeys often venture out on to the savannah where they are exposed
to many predators,hence presumably the enrichment of their alarm call
repertoire.Different predators demand different escape strategies,and
distinct alarm calls aid responding monkeys in deciding which strategy
to adopt.Some vervet alarm calls are generalized signs of anxiety and
fall squarely in the GOP mold;companions respond with varying degrees
of vigilance and anxiety.Others are much more specific,so much so that
it is not unreasonable to begin thinking of them as labels or names for
particular predator classes.
Some calls were identified in the literature as leopard calls,snake calls,
and eagle calls.This usage was rendered all the more reasonable with the
results of the playback experiments showing that the calls elicited natural
reactions that were already known from Struhsaker’s work to be specific
and appropriate to particular predators.Responses differed in ways that
made good ecological sense,given the hunting strategies of the preda-
tors.For example,in response to eagle calls,monkeys searched the sky
and ran into bushes.In response to leopard calls they leaped up into the
canopy of the nearest fever tree where a leopard could not reach them.
When a snake call was played,they reared up on their hind legs and
scanned the underbrush around them.In other words,there was every
indication that the calls served as symbols for the different classes of
predators (Cheney and Seyfarth 1990).
Since these vervet studies,many other demonstrations of animal alarm
and food calls (table 3.1) displayed what is defined as “functional refer-
ence”(Marler,Evans,and Hauser 1992;Evans and Marler 1995;Marler
and Evans 1996).The underlying concept is that functionally referential
calls seem to stand for the class of objects or referents that they repre-
sent in the minds of others.In other words,they function as abstract,non-
iconic symbols.However,the role of the many dimensions of mindfulness
still remains unclear (Hauser 1996).Without benefit of introspection,and33 Origins of Music and SpeechMUS3 9/14/99 11:58 AM Page 33