---
pretty_name: Animal Sounds Collection
description: >
  A collection of audio recordings for various animal vocalizations, including birds, dogs, Egyptian fruit bats, giant otters, macaques, orcas, and zebra finches.
  Useful for training and evaluating models in bioacoustics, species classification, and sound event detection.
license: cc-by-4.0

configs:
- config_name: birds
  data_files: "birds/*"
- config_name: dogs
  data_files: "dogs/*"
- config_name: egyptian_fruit_bat
  data_files: "egyptian_fruit_bat/*"
- config_name: egyptian_fruit_bat_extended
  data_files: "egyptian_fruit_bat/*"
- config_name: giant_otter
  data_files: "giant_otter/*"
- config_name: macaque
  data_files: "macaque/*"
- config_name: orca
  data_files: "orca/*"
- config_name: zebra_finch
  data_files: "zebra_finch/*"
---

# Animal Sounds Collection

This dataset contains audio recordings of various animal vocalizations from a range of species, curated to support research in bioacoustics, species classification, and sound event detection. It includes clean and annotated audio samples from the following animals:

- Birds  
- Dogs  
- Egyptian fruit bats  
- Giant otters  
- Macaques  
- Orcas  
- Zebra finches  

The dataset is designed to be lightweight and modular, making it easy to explore cross-species vocal behaviors or train models for species-specific tasks.

This work is inspired by the excellent [Earth Species Project Library of Datasets](https://github.com/earthspecies/library), which also offers some additonal datasets.

---

## Birds

This dataset consists of songs and calls from 87 bird species and was originally released as part of the NIPS4B challenge.

- **Recordings**: 686  
- **Labels**: Multi-label per recording  
- **Sample rate**: 44,100 Hz  
- **Duration**: ~1s to ~5s  
- **Download**: [Internet Archive](https://archive.org/download/bird_songs)

---

## Dogs

This dataset consists of 693 recordings from 10 adult dogs (ages 3–13), recorded in three contexts: disturbance (e.g., doorbell ringing), isolation, and play.

- **Device**: DCR VX2000 video recorder with built-in omni-directional mic  
- **Sample rate**: 48,000 Hz (16-bit)  
- **Download**: [Preprocessed](https://archive.org/details/dog_barks) | [Raw](https://archive.org/details/dog-barks-raw)  
- **Citation**: Yin, S. & McCowan, B. (2004). *Animal Behaviour*, 68, 343–355.

---

## Egyptian Fruit Bats

This dataset includes 10,000 recording. They are divided between the `egyptian_fruit_bat` and `egyptian_fruit_bat_extended` splits. Another larger sample (~90,000 samples) is available at the Internet Archive.

In this repo, there are 10,000 recordings (1,000 per class), 4.9 GB.

- **Sample rate**: 250,000 Hz  
- **Duration**: 0.02 to 34 seconds  
- **Labels**: Emitter, addressee, context, and behavior annotations  
- **Download**: [Internet Archive – 10k](https://archive.org/details/egyptian_fruit_bats_10k)

---

## Giant Otters

This dataset includes 441 recordings across 22 vocalization types, collected between 2009–2011 by Christina A. S. Mumm and Mirjam Knörnschild.

- **Microphone**: Sennheiser MKH 416-P48U3  
- **Recorders**: Zoom H2 Handy (48 or 96 kHz), with hydrophone (RESON TC4013) for underwater calls  
- **Bit depth**: 24-bit  
- **Download**: [Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/giant_otters)  
- **Citation**: Mumm, C.A.S. & Knörnschild, M. (2016). *PLOS ONE*. [DOI](https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0112562)

---

## Macaques

This dataset contains 7,285 macaque coo calls from 8 individuals (4 males, 4 females), annotated at the individual level.

- **Sample rate**: 5,756 files at 24,414 Hz, 1,529 at 44,100 Hz  
- **Duration**: 0.04s to 1.69s  
- **Download**: [Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/macaque_coo_calls)  
- **Citation**: [PMC Article](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4806230/)

---

## Orcas

This dataset comes from the Orcasound Project and contains two versions:

- **Classification version**: 4-second clips, 398 positive and 196 negative examples  
- **Sample rate**: 44,100 Hz  
- **Download**: [Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/orcas_classification)

---

## Zebra Finches

Collected between 2011–2014 by Julie E. Elie at UC Berkeley using zebra finches from the Theunissen Lab colony.

- **Recordings**: 3,405 across 11 call types  
- **Subjects**: Adults and ~30-day-old juveniles  
- **Labels**: Call type, individual, age  
- **Sample rate**: Not specified  
- **Download**: [Figshare](https://ndownloader.figshare.com/articles/11905533/versions/1)  
- **Citations**:  
  - Elie & Theunissen (2016). *Anim Cogn*. [DOI](https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-015-0933-6)  
  - Elie & Theunissen (2018). *Nat Commun*. [DOI](https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-06394-9)

---

## Citation

If you use this collection, please cite the original sources provided in each section above.