secret squirrel screams
my neighborhood squirrels wave at me, but the bbc reports that they scream too.
Squirrels emit ’silent scream’ [bbc, july 28, 2004]The researchers believe the whispers might be “secret” alarm calls - that the squirrels’ predators cannot hear.
calling secret squirrel. come in secret squirrel.
the article also makes an important, if more general, observation:
Ultrasonic communication is probably far more prevalent in the animal world than we know because, simply, we cannot hear it.
so when i get my transhuman ear upgrades, i’m going to be driven mad by all the screaming animals. great.
Secret Squirrel
While studying ground squirrels, researchers noticed that some of them made faint whispering sounds, as if they had lost their voices. But when these silent screams were processed by a bat detector, an abundance of ultrasound was detected. The research…
Trackback by Column of the Wolf — July 29, 2004 @ 7:27 pm