Nicolas Mathevon

Jeff Dutter is a bioacoustics intern, joining our lab as part of the Master's of Bioacoustics (MoBi) program at U. Saint-Etienne. Today we had phase 2 of testing our Motus Audio microphone horns in our campus studio. Great work Jeff! #NocMig @ibiouwindsor.bsky.social @nicolasmathevon.bsky.social

What babies’ cries really tell us – and why maternal instinct is a myth Is it possible to interpret babies’ cries in order to understand their needs accurately?

Almost 90,000 (!) readers now know what babies' cries are saying. Why not you 😏? 👇 (do not hesitate to disseminate!)

theconversation.com/what-babies-...

International Master of Bioacoustics Home page of the International Master of Bioacoustics

NEW! The International Master of Bioacoustics (MoBi) now includes its first year (M1)! Applications are open sensoryneuroetholo.wixsite.com/mobim1. We are seeking 8 French-speaking students with skills in R and Python programming. Full details👇
sensoryneuroetholo.wixsite.com/mobim1
#bioacoustics

International Master of Bioacoustics Home page of the International Master of Bioacoustics

NEW! The International Master of Bioacoustics (MoBi) now includes its first year (M1)! Applications are open sensoryneuroetholo.wixsite.com/mobim1. We are seeking 8 French-speaking candidates with skills in R and Python programming. For full details👇
sensoryneuroetholo.wixsite.com/mobim1

International Master of Bioacoustics Home page of the International Master of Bioacoustics

The International Master of Bioacoustics MoBi , a one year (M2) international training programme opened to
French students with a master's degree (M1)
International students with minimum BSc degree.
Applications for the September 2026 entry are open.
#bioacoustics
www.masterofbioacoustics.com

📣 Earth Species Project is #hiring! 📣

We’re looking for a Senior Infrastructure Engineer to help us build the foundational pipelines to decode #animalcommunication with advanced #AI.

If you’re excited about building high-performance infrastructure, apply today! www.earthspecies.org/blog/were-hi...

Les crocodiles, des reptiles loquaces et à l’écoute du monde On l’imagine chasseur solitaire et discret, constamment à l’affût d’une proie. Pourtant, l’armure d’écailles du crocodile dissimule une vie sociale complexe.

S'immerger dans le monde sonore des #crocodiles, c'est à lire dans @france.theconversation.com ! On se délecte d'écouter @nicolasmathevon.bsky.social raconter comment petits et adultes ajustent leurs comportements grâce aux #vocalisations. En plus, y'a des sons 🎶
theconversation.com/les-crocodil...

Parenting and empathy capabilities drive brain response to pain cues in baby cries. New paper by ENES Bioacoustics Research Lab & Co 👇
#bioacoustics #baby #parents
tinyurl.com/4vxfu6ap

The book The Voices of Nature by Nicolas Mathevon sits on a table surrounded by skulls of the animals depicted on the cover (which were all drawn by the author's dad, Bernard Mathevon!) The skulls are American robin (Turdus migratorius, OUVC 9766), spectacled caiman (Caiman cf. C. crocodilus, OUVC 11550), northern elephant seal (Mirounga angustirostris, OUVC 9581), and spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta, OUVC 10571).

Just finished this awesome new-ish book by @nicolasmathevon.bsky.social on animal communication. It covers a lot of ground with a huge diversity of species—& it's a blast to read! Great for those interested in sensory ecology. (I had skulls of all the cover animals, so I snapped a photo! 😃)

That's all folks. Looking forward what 2026 will be about. Maybe a hippo paper? Wish you a happy new year!

Absence of a dear enemy effect and limited evidence of neighbour-stranger vocal discrimination in Ecstatic Display Songs of nesting African penguins - Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology Abstract African penguins (Spheniscus demersus), a critically endangered seabird, form dense breeding colonies where nesting individuals maintain territories advertised through a loud vocalisation, th...

And finally, a penguin paper. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Nonlinear acoustic phenomena tune the adults’ facial thermal response to baby cries with the cry amplitude envelope Abstract. Getting caregivers to respond to their pain cries is vital for the human baby. Previous studies have shown that certain features of baby cries—th

Still about baby cries - and the way we feel them. First experiment using thermal imaging published in the journal Interface.
royalsocietypublishing.org/rsif/article...

A short paper about cries of premature babies
hal.science/hal-05245427/

Nonlinear phenomena make animal calls alarming for human listeners Animal vocalizations are extremely diverse, and evolutionary approaches to understanding this diversity assume some mapping between their acoustic for…

Nonlinear phenomena make animal calls alarming for human listeners. An interesting experiment published in iScience.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Temporal integration and decision-making in crocodiles Summary: Crocodiles' attraction to two sensory stimuli (water vibration and airborne sound) is independent of the order of arrival of these stimuli, within the limit of a certain time window.

Coming back to crocodile bioacoustics: Temporal integration and decision-making in crocodiles, published in Biology Open journals.biologists.com/bio/article/...

Visualization and quantification of coral reef soundscapes using CoralSoundExplorer software Author summary Passive acoustic monitoring is an increasingly popular method for monitoring ecosystems, but analyzing the data generated by this approach remains complex. In this paper, we present Cor...

Besides studying acoustic communication, we also worked on tools for soundscapes analysis. In this paper, a dedicated software for the analysis of coral reef soundscapes: journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

Ultrasonic signals support a large-scale communication landscape in wild mice Perrier et al. show that wild African striped mice (R. pumilio) use short-range ultrasonic signals for large-scale communication. By vocalizing at key territorial locations, they extend the functional...

... and the second African striped mouse paper. With the cover of Current Biology! www.cell.com/current-biol...

A cooperatively breeding mouse shows flexible use of its vocal repertoire according to social context Mice exchange information using chemical, visual and acoustic signals. Long ignored, mouse ultrasonic communication is now considered to be an importa…

2025 has also seen our first papers on the bioacoustics of the African striped mouse. This one presents the vocal repertoire.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

still non linear phenomena, in puppy whines...
www.cogsci.se/publications...

and a case study on non linear phenomean in the voice of elephants seals.
hal.science/hal-05356800...

Nonlinear phenomena in vertebrate vocalizations: mechanisms and communicative functions Abstract. Nonlinear phenomena (NLP) are acoustic irregularities that are widespread in animal and human vocal repertoires, as well as in music. These pheno

A nice intro to nonlinear phenomena in vertebrate vocalizations.
royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article...

What makes the pain cries of human babies so difficult to ignore? This is the topic of this 2nd 2025 baby cry paper, published in Philosophical Transactions.
hal.science/hal-05033758...

... followed by a bunch of papers on human baby cries. This one reports that the ability to decode babies’ cries does
not decline with age (published in Biology Letters).
hal.science/hal-04967341...

Then, we published this paper, still in Animal Behaviour, demonstrating vocal accomodation in bonobos.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
hal.science/hal-04841758...

Happy new year bioacousticians et al! To kick off the new year, here's a quick roundup of our 2025 publications. The year began with this paper on crocodile mothers. Published in Animal Behaviour: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... - free version here:
hal.science/hal-04942512...
#bioacoustics

Sound symbolism facilitates interspecies communication between humans and domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) - Scientific Reports Scientific Reports - Sound symbolism facilitates interspecies communication between humans and domestic dogs (Canis familiaris)

Communication between humans and domestic dogs 👇
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

International Master of Bioacoustics Home page of the International Master of Bioacoustics

Admissions to the International Master of Bioacoustics for the 26-27 academic year are now open. Please spread the word!
More info here 👇 www.masterofbioacoustics.com?lang=fr

#bioacoustics

Last day of the semester for the MOBI master program in bioacoustics, with a fantastic talk by Prof. Mirjam Knörnschild 🙏🦇. Want to apply for next year? Applications will open soon at www.masterofbioacoustics.com.
#bioacoustics

Huge thank you to our co-organizers: Burooj Ghani, @nicolasmathevon.bsky.social, Lauren Harrell, Vincent Dumoulin; our keynotes Laela Sayigh, @oisinmacaodha.bsky.social & Julie Elie; guest panelist @marine-valeria.bsky.social; & everyone who presented papers.

We couldn’t have done it without you!

Tetrapod vocal evolution reveals faster rates and higher-pitched sounds for mammals Abstract. Using the voice to produce sound is a widespread form of communication and plays an important role across diverse species and contexts. Variation

Now out in Evolution @journal-evo.bsky.social

Tetrapod vocal evolution reveals faster rates and higher-pitched sounds for mammals 🐘🦉🐸.

Mammalian hearing likely allowed the rapid diversification of their vocalizations.

Open access here:
doi.org/10.1093/evol...

#bioacoustics #animalcommunication