Frogs Use Hollow Trees as Megaphones

From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Fri Feb 07 2003 - 08:11:23 MST

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    (I might have missed this topic if it was discussed here, so apologies if
    this is a repeat)

    There's a very cool article in the December 7, 2002, Science News, page 356
    about the Borneo tree-hole frog.

    It seems that this tree frog adapts its vocal cords to resonate to the
    particular watery acoustic environment that s/he finds himself in. This
    environment is a tree-hole, a cavity with water, and the frog 'calls'
    to resonate to that cavity, raising and lowering the pitch of his/her
    vocal output until it hits the frequency that resonates in that
    particular cavity. Then the frog lengthens individual calls and
    shortens the time between them as he/she settles down for serious
    chirping. The authors of the Dec. 5 Nature article referenced by
    Science News says that if the male frog gains a resonance effect, then
    he invests even more energy in the calling to become a supersexy male.
    :-)

    Frogs Use Hollow Trees as Megaphones
    http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/12/1204_021204_TreeFrogs.html

    Returning his calls: Borneo's male tree-hole frog varies pitch to lure mate
    http://www.frogs.org/news/article.asp?CategoryID=1&InfoResourceID=1470.2

    -- 
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Amara Graps, PhD          email: amara@amara.com
Computational Physics     vita:  ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt
Multiplex Answers         URL:   http://www.amara.com/
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"It seems like once people grow up, they have no idea what's cool."
--Calvin

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