Frog Communicates with Ultrasound

Sunday, March 19th, 2006

The concave-eared torrent frog communicates with ultrasound to overcome the noise of the waterfalls it inhabits:

The concave-eared torrent frog (Amolops tormotus) joins bats, dolphins and whales and a small number of rodents in the elite club of creatures that are able to communicate by ultrasound.

A team led by Albert Feng of the University of Illinois found that male frogs of this species make high-pitched melodic bird-like calls that sometimes exceeded their recorder’s maximum range of 128 kilohertz — more than six times the limit of human hearing.

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