Costa Rica frogs are the musicians of the night
¨Frogs do for the night what birds do for the day: they give it a voice¨, naturalist Archie Carr once observed. ¨And the voice is a varied and stirring one that ought to be better known.¨ Carr cherished the pleasing ¨swamp songs¨ of his native Florida, but he also recognized that ¨perhaps the reason frog songs are not really appreciated is that they are sung in places where mosquitoes and snakes live¨.
The musical repertoires of frogs easily rival those of birds in their richness, variety, and beauty. Although many humans characterize the calls of the male frogs as ¨croaks¨ or ¨ribbitts¨, the sounds are far more diverse, incorporating snores, grunts, trills, clucks, chirps, buzzes, rings, whoops, whistles, growls, quacks, and various other noises.
Scientists have identified about a half dozen or so different types of frog calls. The best known is the advertisement call, performed by males during the breeding season to signal their species, sex, location, and readiness to mate. Some males perform solo, while others sing in giant choruses (up to 1.000 frogs or more), which are audible more than a mile away!
Text from ¨Frogs¨ by David Badger - year 2000
