Amphibians from rainforests in central and South America capture their mates through water ripples National Geographic reported Thursday.
"When a frog detects the shadow of a bat overhead, his first defense is to stop calling immediately," Woulter Halfwerk, main author of the study told The Guardian. Unfortunately for the frog, the water ripples created by his call do not also stop immediately," Halfwerk told The Guardian. "The ripples continue to emanate out for several seconds, creating a watery bull's-eye on the frog. Bats use the ripples, thereby beating the anti-predator strategy," Halfwerk told The Guardian.
"It's comparable to the use of lip reading," Halfwerk, a postdoc from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, said in a statement National Geographic reported. "While sound is the most obvious component of the frogs' communication, the call-induced ripples alter the behavior of competing males that sense them," Halfwerk told National Geographic.
Scientists captured stray frogs and bats in the Panamanian forest, and then examined the reptiles in a laboratory National Geographic reported.
Scientists discovered that bats could not communicate via ripples especially when bodies of water were cluttered National Geographic reported.
The garbage created an echo-acoustic clutter, which dissipates the ripples normally made by the Tungara Frog's behavior National Geographic reported.
The affect also disrupts the animal's competency to tell their location National Geographic reported.
This ultimately helps prevent frogs from being notices by other species National Geographic reported.
"The basic one is this whining sound, and then they make it complex by adding these 'chuck' noises," Rachel Page, a researcher at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute told Smithsonian Magazine. "A whine is necessary and sufficient to bring in a female, but chucks make the call more attractive," Page told The Smithsonian.
"The frogs call as conspicuously as they can to get mates," Page told The Smithsonian. "But in the course of calling, they're also making themselves vulnerable to predators, because bats can more easily localize calls with chucks."
