Acoustic Characters of Chinese White-bellied Rat's Voice in Different Individual Encountering Settings in Captive

The voices of 11 individuals (3♂, 8♀) of Chinese White-bellied Rat (Niviventer confucianus) from field and their behaviors were recorded and observed in different individual encountering settings in captive. The results showed that Chinese White-bellied Rat made 4 kinds of voices in different individual encountering situations, I.e. defeated male's voice, defeated female's voice, female's voice when male occurred and young's voice when adult occurred, and the significant differences on values of most measured acoustic parameters between voices could be found. The acoustic characters based on our studies suggested that Chinese White-bellied Rat might have two types of voices when individuals encountered each other: One is fearing call with multi-harmonic frequency conversion, including defeated individual's voice and young's voice when adult occurred; another is rejecting call with multi-harmonic constant frequency, such as female's voice when male occurred.