Roar (utterance)

A roar is a deep, bellowing outburst of sound forced through an open mouth. It is produced by animals of certain species. A roar is usually made using the hyoid, a small bone which is not completely rigid in adults. Animals roar for various reasons, including territorial proclamation, communication with other members, and anger. Additionally, the roar of an animal such as a lion is used in the process of finding and competing for a mate.

The roar pattern is composed of three overall segments - a beginning segment sounding like moaning, a middle segment with low frequency loud tones and a final segment which sounds much like grunting. The lion's roar is familiar to many through its inclusion in the MGM opening sequence. This roar segment consists only of the middle portion of the roar, omitting the first and last portions.

See also

• Animal language

External links

• Ananthakrishnan, Gopal, Robert Eklund, Gustav Peters, Gopal & Evans Mabiza. 2011. An acoustic analysis of lion roars. II: Vocal tract characteristics. In: Quarterly Progress and Status Report TMH-QPSR, Volume 51, 2011. Proceedings from Fonetik 2011. Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, 8–10 June 2010, pp. 5–8.Download PDF from http://roberteklund.info.
• Eklund, Robert, Gustav Peters, Gopal Ananthakrishnan & Evans Mabiza. 2011. An acoustic analysis of lion roars. I: Data collection and spectrogram and waveform analyses. In: Quarterly Progress and Status Report TMH-QPSR, Volume 51, 2011. Proceedings from Fonetik 2011. Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, 8–10 June 2010, pp. 1–4. Download PDF from http://roberteklund.info.