SSS 2010-04-01

（单词翻译）

Spotted¹ hyenas² grunt³ and growl⁴. But you know what they're famous for. So what's all the laughing about?

Well, field researchers have noticed that groups of hyenas tend to giggle⁵ around a kill, while they're waiting for their hunk of meat. Now a study in the journal BMC Ecology says the chuckles⁶ may communicate things like age, identity and social status. Which is important stuff for figuring out who gets the tastiest cut of zebra.

 Researchers studied a clan⁷ of spotted hyenas living in a sanctuary⁸ behind the U.C. Berkeley campus. They enticed⁹ 17 hungry hyenas with bones or pieces of meat, and recorded about 250 bouts¹⁰ of giggling¹¹. Then they ran those sound bites through various computer algorithms, running statistical¹² analyses and drawing up spectrograms.

 The result? They say a giggle's pitch and timbre¹³ establish a hyena's identity, and that pitch indicates age. But the giggle also tells you who is boss. A relatively¹⁴ monotone giggle and you're first to the meat. A more erratic¹⁵, variable giggle? Get back in line.

 The researchers’ next plan to study hyenas in the wild. Just for laughs.

 —Christopher Intagliata