If you’re like me, you may have randomly asked yourself, “what sound do pandas make?” Truthfully, before this internship, the only time I’ve ever heard a panda make any kind of noise was when I watched the famous “sneezing panda” video on youtube (https://youtu.be/O4rfQSgkZOE).

A large part of our internship includes behavioral observation in which we use a program on our iPads to record every vocalization, movement, and stereotypic behavior that a specific panda does. As far as vocalizations, there is bleat, bark, growl, moan, chomp, and chirp to name a few. During our training sessions within the first few weeks, Meghan worked with us to teach us how to distinguish the sounds.

Below are short clips of a few of the most common panda vocalizations recorded by past and current fellow interns.

• Bleat: We hear this vocalization the most often. Sometimes they are single, short bleats and other times they are very drawn out like the sound sheep make. This is considered a “friendly” vocalization so we hear it a lot during the breeding season! With absolutely no expectations of what vocalizations they made, I was pretty shocked when I heard this sound from them for the first time. This clip is of Su Lin during breeding season bleating in the inside bedroom area. Credit: Nicole Cady, 2016 Winter Intern

• Chirp: Short and high-pitched bird-like calls (hence the name). The pandas will often direct chirp noises at a neighboring panda if they are interested in him/her. A chirp response is definitely a positive sign for a potential mating. In this clip, you can hear the chirps after a couple initial bleats. In the below clip you can hear Min Min Chirping to Wu Gang. It’s also a good example of how we annotate vocalizations in real-time by assigning numbers to the pandas and saying the numbers quickly after the vocalization. For example, in this Min Min clip you’ll hear Stephanie saying “2” a lot after the vocalizations indicating that Min Min is vocalizing. She also can indicate which male the female is interacting with through this method.  Credit: Stephanie Crider Winter 2017 Intern

• Moan: The pandas can be found making drawn out, deep moaning noises. They usually moan as they walk around their pen, at each other, and as a warning to other bears to keep their distance.  While not at “friendly” vocalization like the bleat and chirp, it doesn’t appear to be an overly aggressive vocalization either as bears seem to do it in a nonchalant way as another bear passes by or even when they are dozing off for a nap. Below you’ll hear the famous Lu Lu moaning during breeding season in the bedroom area. Reverberation can be an issue for us so we attempt to collect and analyze only recordings that are done outside, however I’m sharing the inside bedroom ones because often they sound pretty clear to demonstrate the types of calls! Credit: Stephanie Crider 2017 Winter Intern

With such a variety of vocalization noises, its sometimes difficult to interpret each one to know exactly what it means! Our research focuses on the vocalizations during pre-mating mate choice tests, male-male competitions, and whether male-female vocal interactions change any after the male-male competitions.  The meaning of vocalizations is one of the many highly studied subjects still being investigated on pandas.

If you want more panda vocalization practice go watch Zach Steele’s video from the Christmas Intern group!

-Gigi Banales