Reptile & Amphibian News Blog
Keep up with news and features of interest to the reptile and amphibian community on the kingsnake.com blog. We cover breaking stories from the mainstream and scientific media, user-submitted photos and videos, and feature articles and photos by Jeff Barringer, Richard Bartlett, and other herpetologists and herpetoculturists.
Tuesday, January 3 2012
While most male frogs have one-note calls, the Quang's tree frog sings like a bird.
"Quang's tree frog [...] has a hyperextended vocal repertoire—in other words, it doesn't just repeat the same call over and over, but has a number of types of calls. In fact, no two calls that I recorded were exactly the same, with each frog mixing clicks, whistles and chirps in no apparent order! It is the most variable frog call that I've heard of, and sounds a lot more like a bird song than a frog call [click here to listen to the frog's call]," lead author Jodi Rowley with the Australian Museum in Sydney told mongabay.com.
Unlike Quang's tree frog, Rowley says the majority of frog species stick to one note to attract females.
"[Most male frogs] call to attract females with a rather repetitive call (eg. the familiar "croak, croak, croak" or "chirp, chirp, chirp", for example). While each species has a different call (it helps prevent females attracting frogs of the wrong species!), most frog advertisement calls are of roughly one type of call, repeated until they get the girl."
To read more, click here.
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