In the animal kingdom, some creatures are famous for the sounds they make — birds and their songs, cats and their meows, frogs and their ribbits.
But some animals are more quietly mysterious. Do turtles talk? What about other lesser-known vertebrates such as tuataras, caecilians and lungfish?
The answer is yes, according to a new paper in Nature Communications presenting evidence that many species thought to be mute do in fact vocalize — and the researchers caught it on tape.
Want to hear the evidence? Here's the sound of a southern New Guinea giant softshell turtle. And here's a caecilian, a limbless amphibian that lives hidden underground.
Gabriel Jorgewich Cohen, an evolutionary biologist working on his PhD at the University of Zurich, is the paper's lead author.
He explains that this project began after he read about a turtle in the Amazon making sounds, and he started wondering about the little sounds his own pet tortoises made. He got in touch with a researcher at his former university in Brazil who had created a tool that would be crucial to the research.
Dozens of species were assumed to be mute — until they were recorded making sounds
But some animals are more quietly mysterious. Do turtles talk? What about other lesser-known vertebrates such as tuataras, caecilians and lungfish?
The answer is yes, according to a new paper in Nature Communications presenting evidence that many species thought to be mute do in fact vocalize — and the researchers caught it on tape.
Want to hear the evidence? Here's the sound of a southern New Guinea giant softshell turtle. And here's a caecilian, a limbless amphibian that lives hidden underground.
Gabriel Jorgewich Cohen, an evolutionary biologist working on his PhD at the University of Zurich, is the paper's lead author.
He explains that this project began after he read about a turtle in the Amazon making sounds, and he started wondering about the little sounds his own pet tortoises made. He got in touch with a researcher at his former university in Brazil who had created a tool that would be crucial to the research.
Dozens of species were assumed to be mute — until they were recorded making sounds