Talk Elodie Briefer (CISA lecture series)

18.11.2025 12:15 – 13:15

The evolution of vocal expression of emotions

Expression and perception of emotions play an important role in social species, because they regulate social interactions. The existence of cross-species similarities in emotion expression had been suggested by Darwin in 1872 already. However, since methods to scientifically and objectively study animal emotions have only recently been developed, it is not clear if these similarities really exist. Cross-species similarities would enable, for instance, heterospecifics (e.g. humans and domestic animals) to perceive each other’s emotions. Alternatively, experience and domestication (in the case of human-domestic animal interactions) could also facilitate cross-species perception of emotions. I this talk, I will describe the results of a large study, where we investigated similarities in vocal expression of emotion across several species of domestic (horses, pigs, goats and cattle) and wild (Przewalki’s horses and wild boars) ungulates, as well as within- and between-species perception of emotions, including human perception of ungulate emotions. More recently, we have also incorporated machine learning algorithms to investigate the potential of these techniques for automatic classification of emotions within and across species. These results present interesting insights into the evolution of vocal expression of emotions and the factors that may influence cross-species perception of emotions.

ON SITE

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ZOOM MEETING

https://unige.zoom.us/j/66126790515?pwd=bBXj2nehXljoyyIySIor8gSbxvbRbk.1
Meeting ID: 661 2679 0515
Passcode: 880957

Lieu

Bâtiment: Campus Biotech

H8-01-D

entrée libre