The pant-hoot is a loud call; observers routinely
hear chimpanzees pant-hooting over a mile away in dense forest. High-ranking
adult males pant-hoot most frequently. Females sometimes produce pant-hoots
on their own and often join in a chorus of pant-hoots when others are
calling. Chimpanzees pant-hoot in a variety of circumstances, such as
arriving at fruit trees, responding to distant pant-hoots, when joining
other community members, and when traveling.
Pant-hoots typically consist of a series of four
elements (introduction, build-up, climax, and let-down). This call by
Tofu is a nice example of all four elements in a row
;
someone else adds barks during his let-down. Pant-hoots vary
considerably and don't always include all four elements. For example,
in this example ,
Yogi leaves out the climax, and he drums on a tree buttress
for added effect.
Pant-hoots are individually distinctive. People
can learn to distinguish chimpanzees by their pant-hoots, and chimpanzees
undoubtedly do so. I've included pant-hoots from several adult
males ; ;
and an adult female
to give a sense of individual differences.
Pant-hoot styles also vary among different populations. I found during
my playback experiments that chimpanzees respond dramatically to pant-hoots
from foreign males, especially when the listeners have at least three
adult males in their party.
