Concerning animals, an alarm call refers to various vocalizations that they emit in response to danger. Many primates and birds have elaborate alarm calls for warning other animals of the same species about approaching predators. For example, the blackbird’s characteristic alarm call is a familiar sound in many gardens. Different calls may be used for predators on the ground or from the air. Often, the animals can tell which member of the group is making the call, so that they can disregard those of little reliability.

Evidently, alarm calls promote survival by allowing the hearers of the alarm to escape from the source of peril, but this ecological safety system comes at a high cost-- to the caller. When an animal calls attention to itself by making a noisy alarm, it is much more likely to be eaten by a predator than if it had kept quiet. This intuition has been verified by experimental data on ground squirrel predation rates and the connection between this and the noisy chirping or whistling alarm calls.

This cost/benefit tradeoff of alarm calling behaviour has sparked many interest debates among evolutionary biologists seeking to explain the occurence of such apparently "self-sacrificing" behaviour. The central question is this: "If the ultimate purpose of any animal behaviour is to maximize the chances that an organism's own genes are passed on, with maximum fruitfulness, to future generations, why would an individual deliberately risk destroying themselves (their entire genome) for the sake of saving others (other genomes)?".

Some scientists have used the evidence of alarm-calling behaviour to challenge the theory that "evolution works only/primarily at the level of the gene or genome".

External links

• Chickadees' alarm-call carry information about size, threat of predator
• The Trek of the Pika "A story complete with sounds of pika and marmot calls" 2002-10-30

"Characteristics of arctic ground squirrel alarm calls" Oecologia Volume 7, Number 2 / June, 1971 For album titles with the same name, see 2002 (album). ... October 30 is the 303rd day of the year (304th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 62 days remaining. ...