• Question: How do animals talk?

    Asked by 08764654765375437543737dominic to Amy, Karen, Sarah, Vijay, Will on 18 Jun 2012. This question was also asked by ciaralydon.
    • Photo: Amy Birch

      Amy Birch answered on 18 Jun 2012:

      Hi dominic!
      Animals ‘talk’ in lots of different ways, in fact a lot of animal communication evolved to be very different so other animals can’t ‘eavesdrop’ on conversations!
      Elephants use infrasound (which we can’t hear) and vibrations in the ground to communicate over large distances (they have vibration detectors in their trunk and legs to pinpoint where the sound came from), some fish use electricity to communicate with each other, wolves howl to communicate over large distances, male frogs croak to attract females (in green tree frogs, the deeper your croak the sexier you are to females!).
      Vervet monkeys are the coolest I think: they use different alarm calls to warn each other about different predators & many people think that this may be a precursor to human language.

      Hope this answers your question! 🙂

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