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）的跳跃-鸣叫展示行为（jump–yip display）具有传染性，会在土拨鼠聚居地中传播，恰似体育场内的"人浪"。鉴于灵长类的传染性通讯可用于评估同种个体的社会认知水平，本研究探究了跳跃鸣叫互动的发起者是否会根据被吸引参与展示互动的同种个体的反应调整自身行为。相邻聚居地个体的响应程度提升时，互动发起者会将显著更高比例的时间投入主动觅食活动。由此可见，传染性跳跃鸣叫行为的功能在于评估相邻个体的警觉性，通过获取社会信息以实时评估有效同种群体规模，并揭示这类群居啮齿类存在与心理理论（theory of mind）相符的主动同种认知探查行为。