How a Puppy Whines Affects Their Mother's Behavior

Source: SC Psychological Enterprises Ltd./Used with permission

Based only on the sound of their whimpering and whining, can a canine mother recognize which puppies are her own offspring? Using only the quality of their vocalizations, can this same canine mother determine if her puppies are in need of assistance? The answers to these questions may have been provided by an international team of researchers headed by Mathilde Massenet at the University of Saint-Etienne in France with the help of 220 Beagle puppies and their concerned mothers.

A Human Illustration

Let me give you a human example of what we're talking about. A few years back, I attended a community event where the organizers had provided an alcove at the back of the hall that mothers of young infants could use to park their prams. These carriages could still be seen, and the sounds of the babies in them could be heard. Since they were out of the main flow of activity, and it was a bit quieter back there, it was presumed that the infants would be more likely to doze off into a nap. When I arrived, I glanced at the area and saw that there were three prams there.

The three mothers were gathered near the coffee urn. It was then that I heard some crying from one of the baby carriages. One of the mothers looked up and announced, "That's just Reggie. I don't think there's a problem, and he should stop crying in a couple of moments." Sure enough, after just a minute or two, the crying stopped.

Just a short time later, another cry issued from the alcove. Another one of the mothers looked in that direction and said: "That's my Edward, and I think he needs some attention." At this point, she left the group and went into the alcove to attend to her child.

Although I have reared children from infancy, to my untutored ears, both of these cries sounded the same to me. I remember wondering how these mothers not only recognized their own child's crying but also whether or not their child needed attention since, to my ear, neither seemed to be particularly stressed.

Generalizing these questions to include dogs, the issue becomes, can canine mothers, rearing multiple offspring, both recognize them and assess their condition from their vocalizations?

Sounds That Young Puppies Make

In this recent study, the researchers assumed that there was something in the sounds that puppies produce that gives a clue as to the identity of individual pups and also about their current condition or need for attention. So they started off by doing a comprehensive acoustic analysis of 4,400 whines recorded from 220 Beagle puppies from 40 different litters. These whines were chosen to indicate some degree of distress, so they were recorded during a short separation of the puppies from their mothers and littermates.

The first thing that they found was that a litter of puppies, considered as a unit, had a certain average acoustic identity, which was distinct from other litters. Part of this had to do with the fundamental frequency of their vocalizations, which determines the pitch of the sound mixture (high or low). The second was a measure related to timbre (a combination of harmonics), which gives us a sound quality that allows us, for example, to recognize a C note sounded on a trumpet as different from that same C note sounded on a clarinet.

In addition to sound qualities distinguishing between litters, individual pups had their own sound signatures, and these were best predicted by the size of the puppy. In most litters, smaller puppies were found to produce higher-pitched whines. This is because they have shorter vocal cords and smaller voice boxes. We recognize the relationship between size and pitch of the voice automatically—thus, when Mickey Mouse meets the giant from Jack and the Beanstalk, we expect his voice to be high and squeaky and the giant's to be low and booming.

How Canine Mothers Respond to Puppy Whines

The originally recorded puppy whines could be manipulated electronically and could be played back using a wireless speaker which was zipped into a fleece container roughly the size of a large hot dog bun. The speaker was placed behind a low wooden screen and could be easily reached by the mother.

Various puppy whining sounds were played back, and the mother's responses were noted. Most importantly, it was found that the mothers clearly recognized the auditory characteristics of the whining behavior of their own litter of puppies. In fact, they responded with caregiving behaviors 93 percent of the time when the sounds were variants of those from their own litter.

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Mothers offered fewer caregiving responses when the sounds were derived from litters of puppies that were not their own or if the sounds from their own litter had been manipulated to change the pitch or the timbre so that they differed a bit from the natural sounds of their biological offspring.

By modifying the recorded sounds, it was found that mothers provide the highest level of care in response to high-pitched whines simulating relatively small puppies from their own litter. From a biological point of view, this makes sense since smaller puppies are apt to be more fragile and will require more care and feeding to survive.

The important takeaway from this piece of research is that young individuals, certainly puppies (and perhaps even humans?), have their own distinguishing pattern of vocalizations. Presumably without any conscious effort, mothers of such young creatures learn to identify their own babies and learn how some of the sounds that their offspring make might indicate that they are in need of additional maternal care.

The effect that these vocalizations can have on a canine mother is quite strong. The authors note, "In fact, we were astonished to observe that in about a fifth of playbacks (and significantly more in response to whines from their own puppies), the mothers carried the loudspeaker into the nest, as if it were their actual puppy, indicating that the whine acoustic stimulus was sufficient to trigger this key maternal behavior in the absence of specific visual or olfactory cues."

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