Washington: Giving an insight into the
animal communication, a new study has found that from crickets
to whales, all the animals have common denominators in their
calls.
Scientists at the University of Florida and Oklahoma
State University found common denominators in the calls of
hundreds of species of insects, birds, fish, frogs, lizards
and mammals that can be predicted with simple mathematical
models.
Compiling data from nearly 500 species, the team has
found the calls of crickets, whales and a host of other
creatures are ultimately controlled by their metabolic rates
-- in other words, their uptake and use of energy.
"Very few people have compared cricket chirps to codfish
sounds to the sounds made by whales and monkeys to see if
there were commonalities in the key features of acoustic
signals, including the frequency, power and duration of
signals," said senior author James Gillooly.
"Our results indicate that, for all species, basic
features of acoustic communication are primarily controlled by
individual metabolism, which in turn varies predictably with
body size and temperature.
So, when the calls are adjusted for an animal's size
and temperature, they even sound alike."
The finding, reported in the Proceedings of the Royal
Society B, will help scientists understand how acoustic
communication evolved across species, uniting a field of study
that has long focused on the calls of particular groups of
animals, such as birds.
PTI
First Published: Thursday, January 07, 2010, 16:29