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Scientists Study The Scream Of The Squirrel
SimianOverlord writes "The BBC details a recent breakthrough in Squirrel to Man understanding. Scientist James Hare, in his study of the North American Ground Squirrel, noted peculiar behaviour; they appeared to 'lose their voice' while communicating, producing only a 'breathy whisper' in sound ranges audible to the human ear. On a hunch, the intrepid boffin borrowed a 'bat detector', which translates inaudible ultrasound into the human hearing range, and discovered the Squirrels were using a whole range of distinct ultrasound messages which can give gradated threat warnings or be targetted to family members, all without any predators detecting the message, or easily pinpointing the location of the caller. Though it has been known for some time rodents use ultrasound, this is believed to be the first time that it has a proven purpose, and the content of the messages have been deciphered."
If they need to capture specimens to test, there's always this method.
Crazy Brits - apparently the call gophers 'ground squirrels'. Squirrels, as we all well know, communicate by singing in poorly made flash movies.
That's pretty nutty stuff.
... at 31,357 Hz, it clearly means "That big thing with the bat-detector is starting to freak me out. Lets bite his nuts."
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
pesky moose and squirrel can no longer evade me!
perl -e '$_="\007/4`\cp%2,".chr(127);s/./"\"\\c$&\""/gees
You realize that if this post was about research into asteroid mining, your alter ego would be saying "Why are we spending money on something so pointless when we could be trying to better understand the ecosystem where we live right now?"
It all depends on whose ox is gored.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Squirrel 1: Sir, we are under attack.
Squirrel 2: Raise shields.
Squirrel 1: [Holds up large leaf with hole in it] Our shields are no match for their weapon systems, sir. But I believe that if we remodulate our communication frequencies, we will be undetectable to the enemy.
Squirrel 2: Make it so.
-- I have monkeys in my pants.