Observational fear learning in degus is correlated with temporal vocalization patterns

•Degus form context-fear associations after observing others experience footshocks.•Observers of distressed cagemates show more fear learning than those of strangers.•Observer learning correlates with temporal patterns of distress/alarm calls.•Repeated, k-means clustering reveals differentially expressed syllable types.•No type of syllable was found to correlate with observer learning.