Scientists studying a rare Chinese frog have discovered it can communicate by ultrasound – very high pitched sounds that are above the range that human ears can hear, according to reports in ABC News Online Australia (16/3/06) and New Scientist (18/3/06, p21).
The frog is named the “concave eared torrent frog”, because unlike other frogs, the male frog’s ear drums are recessed into its head, and it lives in places where there are lots of turbulent flowing streams and waterfalls.
Albert Feng, an acoustic specialist at the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois, Urbana, recorded the male frog’s audible and ultrasonic sounds and then played the sounds to other male frogs to see if they responded. They did. He then blocked their ears with clay and played ultrasonic sounds again. The frogs did not respond, indicating that their unusual ears enabled them to hear the ultrasounds. Hearing ultrasound requires thin eardrums and small middle ear bones. Being recessed into the head protects the eardrum and makes the middle ear smaller. Female frogs do not have recessed ears, but researchers have not tested them to see what sounds they can hear. The suggestion has been made that ultrasound enables the frogs to communicate in an environment filled with constant low frequency noise from the waterfalls and turbulent water. Feng commented: “Nature has a way of evolving mechanisms to facilitate communication in very adverse situations.”
It is important to note that these frogs need three complete features, the larynx, ears and brain, in order to produce, hear and successfully interpret ultrasounds and thus for functional communication to occur. Extraordinary faith is needed to believe the adverse environment, chance or random mutations were at all responsible for all three being formed and working together, and all the while functionally interdependent. It is a far more logical faith to believe that a purposeful Creator, the God of the Bible, made a frog with all such features, created with the ability to live and thrive in that environment.