Data from: Catch the wave: prairie dogs assess neighbours' awareness using contagious displays

The jump–yip display of black-tailed prairie dogs (Cynomys ludovicianus) is contagious, spreading through a prairie dog town as 'the wave' through a stadium. Because contagious communication in primates serves to assess conspecific social awareness, we investigated whether instigators of jump–yip bouts adjusted their behaviour relative to the response of conspecifics recruited to display bouts. Increased responsiveness of neighbouring town members resulted in bout initiators devoting a significantly greater proportion of time to active foraging. Contagious jump–yips thus function to assess neighbours' alertness, soliciting social information to assess effective conspecific group size in real time and reveal active probing of conspecific awareness consistent with theory of mind in these group-living rodents.

黑尾土拨鼠（Cynomys ludovicianus）的跳叫展示行为（jump-yip display）具有传染性，如同体育场内的观众人浪一般，在整个土拨鼠聚居群落中扩散。鉴于灵长类的传染性交流可用于评估同种个体的社会认知水平，本研究针对跳叫行为发起者是否会依据被招募参与该展示行为的同种个体的反应调整自身行为展开了探究。周边聚居群落成员的响应度提升时，行为发起者投入主动觅食活动的时间占比会显著增加。由此可见，具备传染性的跳叫行为可用于评估同类的警觉性，通过获取社会信息以实时测算有效的同种群体规模，同时展现出这类群居啮齿类动物对同类认知的主动探查，这与心理理论（theory of mind）的相关理论相符。