These creatures seemed to be silent to us. Science Only Recently Found Its Voices

53 creatures, most of which are thought to be voiceless, have had their "voices" added to a family tree of vocalisations in an effort to pinpoint the time when acoustic communication first appeared in evolutionary history.

 

The South American lungfish (Lepidosiren paradoxa), the limbless amphibian known as the Cayenne caecilian (Typhlonectes compressicauda), and the tuatara, a reptile from New Zealand, are among the species that are finally being heard (Sphenodon punctatus).

 

The authors write in their conclusion, All documented species were found to contain a broad acoustic repertoire comprising a number of different sounds. The ability to produce vocal sounds is shared by a large number of turtle species, which strongly suggests that it is ancestral to the whole turtle clade.

 

Researchers discovered evidence of a common genesis for sound production and acoustic communication across all creatures in possession of enough backbone to draw and expel breath when they merged the turtle data with an investigation of 1,800 other vertebrates with lungs.

 

Even while amphibians and reptiles have received significantly less research, this does not indicate that they are not producing sound. Researchers contend that rigorous documentation of these "important, ignored groups" is necessary if we are to fully comprehend how auditory communication arose.

 

The current study specifically aimed to examine this. Even though the researchers only looked for sound production in 106 understudied species, they were nevertheless able to locate several instances of auditory communication in the literature. Even with such a small sample size, the history of animal sound evolution becomes much more complex.

 

According to the current dominant hypothesis on auditory communication, this essential characteristic appeared several times across the animal tree of life. This is based on the seemingly large range of voice morphologies and ear morphologies found in both birds and mammals.

 

But according to this latest phylogenetic study, that is untrue. Animals from different branches of the tree of life that produce sound similarly and for similar purposes—mating, communicating, or parenting—indicate that the ability had a shared ancestor. It might have undergone only one evolution before diverging.

 

In fact, the characteristic appears to have originated from a 407 million-year-old ancestor that was shared by a wide range of current vertebrates. That deadline might possibly be postponed further if connections between lungs and swim bladders are taken into consideration.

 

The results serve as a helpful reminder that just because an animal is difficult to hear does not preclude our obligation to pay attention to it.