What do mating frogs sound like

An abrupt iCUP! The aggressive call is an abrupt, spitlike phphoot! A frightened individual, especially a juvenile, may give a loud eeek! Aroused individuals produce rolling, stuttered series of calls: grrruut-grrruut-grrruut-grrruut. Calls are repeated every five to ten seconds. The male has a large vocal pouch. When calling, he throws his head upward and backward out of the water, and the nictitating membranes inner eyelids cover his half-closed eyes.

Calls of Frogs and Toads of the Northeast Presented roughly in the order that they are heard through the season. Subscribe to My Newsletter Join my mailing list to be notified when I publish new articles or blog posts.

Meet the people trying to help. Environment COP26 nears conclusion with mixed signals and frustration. Environment Planet Possible India bets its energy future on solar—in ways both small and big. Environment As the EU targets emissions cuts, this country has a coal problem.

Paid Content How Hong Kong protects its sea sanctuaries. History Magazine These 3,year-old giants watched over the cemeteries of Sardinia. Science Coronavirus Coverage What families can do now that kids are getting the vaccine.

Magazine How one image captures 21 hours of a volcanic eruption. Science Why it's so hard to treat pain in infants. Science The controversial sale of 'Big John,' the world's largest Triceratops. Science Coronavirus Coverage How antivirals may change the course of the pandemic. Travel A road trip in Burgundy reveals far more than fine wine. Travel My Hometown In L. Subscriber Exclusive Content. As they documented in a study published today in Science , the calls leave behind a physical trail of evidence in the water—a radiating circle of ripples—that a predatory bat species can detect with echolocation and use to lock on to its prey.

The finding emerged through a project led by Wouter Halfwerk that looked at the acoustic and tactile effects of the frogs' calls on fringe-lipped bats, as well as on other frogs competing for mates. Wouter was inspired to study the topic, he says, after conversations with colleagues about other bat species' potential ability to detect fish breaching the surface of water by echolocation, which would allow the predators to know when to swoop in for the kill.

To test the hypothesis that the bats were picking up on these ripples, the researchers put fake plastic frogs next to shallow pools of water and played recordings of their mating calls. For some of the pools, they artificially generated ripples that resembled those made by calling frogs; others, they left still. When they unleashed bats into the experiment, they found that they dove at the frogs next to rippling pools