Author: Matthew Taub / Source: Atlas Obscura
It’s a hot, steamy night in Panama’s Soberanía National Park, and a male túngara frog is looking for a date. Under cover of darkness, he throws out his best croaks, hoping one will land like Cupid’s arrow in the ear of a potential mate.
Just a few miles away, in the town of Gamboa, his (relatively) urban counterparts could be having better luck.A new study, conducted by an international team of researchers and published today in Nature Ecology & Evolution, finds that urban túngara frogs issue more complex mating calls than do their cousins in the forest, and that those calls are markedly more attractive. Indeed, a full three-quarters of female túngara frogs observed in the study preferred the urban calls, which comprise not only “whines” but also sultry “chucks”—staccato, baritone growls that, like exclamation marks, add emphasis (and maybe feeling?). Michael J. Ryan, an integrative biologist at the…
The post Urban Frogs Make More Attractive Mating Calls appeared first on FeedBox.
