[quote]
Caterpillars apparently can whistle, letting out squeaks that can fend off attacking birds, scientists have now found.
[img]http://www.csmonitor.com/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/media/images/1210-whistling-caterpillar/9174881-1-eng-US/1210-whistling-caterpillar_full_380.jpg[/img]
They don't whistle by puckering their lips and blowing, since they don't have lips. Instead, they blow out their sides, researchers said.
Scientists have known for more than 100 years that many caterpillars can generate clicking or squeaking noises. However, researchers have only recently begun to experimentally investigate how these noises are made and what roles they might play.
Neuroethologist Jayne Yack at Carleton University in Ottawa had shown that silk-moth caterpillars ([I][URL="http://www.livescience.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/img_display.php?pic=070301_cat_leaf_02.jpg&cap=The+common+silkmoth+caterpillar+deters+predators+by+clicking+its+mandibles+at+them,+a+new+study+suggests.+The+clicks+serve+as+warning+that+the+caterpillar+will+release+a+foul+brown+fluid.+Credit%3A+Sarah+Brown"]Antheraea polyphemus[/URL][/I]) make clicking sounds by [URL="http://www.livescience.com/animals/070301_clicking_caterpillars.html"]snapping their mandibles together[/URL]. Now she and her colleagues for the first time have revealed that walnut sphinx caterpillars ([I]Amorpha juglandis[/I]) can toot from their sides.
Using high-speed video, the researchers noticed they pulled their heads back to compress the body cavity while they whistled. Unlike reptiles, birds and mammals, insects don't breathe using their mouths, but with holes in their sides known as spiracles, and the scientists reasoned they were [URL="http://www.livescience.com/animals/070517_beetle_breath.html"]forcing air out these holes[/URL] to whistle, generating squeaking noises.
To confirm their idea, researcher Veronica Bura at Carleton University gently applied latex over all eight pairs of the caterpillars' abdominal spiracles and then uncovered each pair systematically while pinching the larva. The whistles definitely came from the eighth pair, generating trains of whistles lasting up to four seconds each, and spanning frequencies that ranged from those audible to birds and humans up to ultrasound.
Silk-moth caterpillars make [URL="http://www.livescience.com/animals/caterpillars-whistle-through-tiny-holes-101210.html"]clicks[/URL] to warn predators that they would make nasty meals, so why do walnut sphinx caterpillars whistle? To find out, Yack and Bura teamed up with researchers at Queen's University in Kingston, Canada, who studied captive yellow warblers ([I]Dendroica petechia[/I]), a bird that is known to frequently eat caterpillars and lives where the walnut sphinx caterpillar does.[/quote][URL]http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2010/1210/Scientists-discover-that-caterpillars-can-whistle[/URL]
I want an orchestra of these little bastards :3:
also :science:
Is that caterpillar Naruto? :downs:
This is both odd and interesting.
Reminds me of that screaming caterpillar from The Simpsons
Fascinating.
i wanna hear it
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