And how does the turtle do? There are over 100 “talking” species that we do not suspect
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It’s one of the first games we teach children from a very young age: repeating animal sounds. Dogs, cats, chickens, donkeys and horses are all the rage. However, the turtles did not arrive. And not surprisingly: until now, in fact, they were mostly believed to be silent. But no, says today a study published on Nature Communication: Turtles, like many other animals, are not mute at all.
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The aim of the work, led by the researchers of theUniversity of Zurich, was actually to understand whether or not vocalizations among vertebrates had a common origin. The dominant hypothesis so far, they explain, is that vocalizations developed for convergent evolution considering how variable the appearance and sensitivity of the hearing systems are. That is to say, the idea of independent separate origins in different animals was believed rather than a common origin. In reality, there is evidence in favor of both hypotheses, but according to the authors, they are tainted by the fact that some species, apparently mute, have not been studied enough.
To try to understand something more on the subject, the researchers recorded the acoustic communications of several vertebrates, especially turtlesbut also of a tuatara (a lizard-like reptile), a lungfish (dipnoi) and a vermiform amphibian (belonging to the Gimnofioni). All use acoustic communications, which the researchers define as varied, although in some cases these are barely perceptible sounds (for the more curious: the researchers make them available in the supplementary materials). And thanks to the analysis of other data collected by other researchers and present in the literature, scientists estimate that they are at least over 100 species – how turtles And salamanders – capable of unsuspected acoustic communications.
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In addition to reconsidering the communication repertoire of vertebrates, the experts have also tried to combine the information obtained with phylogenetic analyses, to understand something more about the birth of these vocalizations. The result, they are willing to bet, points towards a single origin, more or less dating back to a common ancestor who lived over 400 million years ago, as he explained Marcelo Sanchez-Villagra, at the head of the job. Knowing this is not a mere scientific curiosity. In fact, the authors conclude, studying theevolution of acoustic communication it could also help us understand something more about how our language was born and developed.
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