An Englishman In New York: Frog Talk
Did you know that frogs talk to one another? David Thomasesson, humour at the ready, brings surpsing information on the abilites of the concave-eared torrent frog.
Do visit David's entertaining Web site http://www.britoninnewyork.com/
Did you know that some frogs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frog talk with ultra-sound? In ultrasound http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrasound, the pitch or frequency of the sound is too high for the human ear to hear. Fish and homing pigeons can see electromagnetic fields, ants can see polarised light, insects and rodents can smell pheromones, so why can't some frogs, somewhere on the planet, hear ultrasound?
According to ABC Science News recently they can, if they are the concave-eared torrent frog http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concave-eared_Torrent_Frog that lives in the Huangshan Hot Springs, west of Shanghai, in China. There, a continuous torrent of water and sound fills the mountainous environment of the concave-eared torrent frog. Let’s hope that the frogs are actually alive in the Hot Springs. After all, we’ve all heard the fable about frogs and boiling water.
Anyhoo it was recently discovered that these frogs can generate and hear sounds that are way up in the ultrasonic. They can generate and hear frequencies over 128 kHz. That's more than six-times better than a human can hear.
So next time you want to get your message across in the “mountainous environment of the concave-eared torrent frog” just pick one up and use him as a................................froghorn.
And, apparently, there is a Frog magazine in Dutch. On a recent edition, readers were commenting on the quality of the photographs therein. Presumably frogs-porn?
It’s the way I am them telling.
