Quirky Ways That Animals Communicate

04 Nov,2023

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In 1973, Karl Von Frisch won the Nobel Prize partly for his work on bee communication. Frisch observed bees “waggling” inside their hives. The bees used this dance-like movement to inform other bees of the direction and distance to important food sources.

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Dancing

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Color and Light

Many cephalopods change color to communicate. Squid and cuttlefish use this ability to attract mates or to indicate that they’re already spoken for. But it’s also a technique used to fend off rivals and potential predators.

African elephants make sounds that are so low they do not strike the human ear as sounds—or anything more than a rumbling vibration. 

Infrasound and Ultrasound

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Spending their lives underground, African demon mole rat communicate by thumping their heads against the tops of their tunnels, sending vibrations through the earth that travel much farther than any other noise could.

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Thumping

You’re probably familiar with electrically charged sea animals like the electric eel, which uses electricity to navigate through murky water, attack prey, and protect itself from predators. But there are also species of electric fish that use electricity as a means of communicating.

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Electro-communication

The white rhino uses poop-centric methods of communication. These rhinos create communal defecation sites called middens.

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Poop

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“Words,” Whistles, Hums and Growls

We’ve discussed some incredible examples of nonverbal communication, but some animals are masters at verbal communication. Dholes, for example, are Asiatic wild dogs that look like fox-wolves and live in packs of 5 to 12.

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Song

The award for the cockiest communicator has to go to the splendid fairy wren of Australia. Fairy wrens are routinely killed for food by butcher birds, who impale their still-living victims on thorn bushes.