Naked mole rats mimic the dialect of their colony's queen

Colonies of naked mole rats develop dialects in their vocalisations that may help them distinguish between friends and foes. These dialects are influenced by each colony's queen, and become more varied if the queen dies. Naked mole rats (Heterocephalus glaber) are extremely vocal creatures that live in colonies in which only one queen reproduces. To see whether their vocalisations help maintain their social structure, Alison Barker at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in Germany and her colleagues recorded more than 36,000 greeting calls, from 166 naked mole rats in seven colonies raised in labs in Germany and South Africa. After identifying the acoustic features of these soft chirps, such as pitch, peak frequency and duration, the researchers used the calls to train a machine-learning algorithm.