The vocal communication between vertebrates began hundreds of millions of years ago

Laila Ali

In a recent study published in the journal Nature Communications on January 17, researchers from the University of Arizona tracked vocal communication in vertebrates living on Earth to 350 million years ago.

The researchers concluded that the ability to pronounce dates back hundreds of millions of years, is associated with a nightlife style, and has remained stable, because the voice communication feature is the strongest among other communication signals such as coloring or enlarging the body to attract or intimidate the other's attention.

John Ji Wins of the University of Arizona and Zhou Chen, visiting scientist from Henan Normal University in Shenzhen, China, have modeled a tree of 1,800 species that show relationships between mammals, birds, lizards, snakes, turtles, crocodiles, and amphibians dating back 350 million years.

Communication by noise
The researchers in the study obtained data from the scientific literature about the presence and absence of audio communication within each type of specimen and classified it on the tree.

By applying statistical analytical tools, the study revealed that the vertebrate origins that lived on Earth had no ability to communicate through pronunciation, using the respiratory system to generate sound. Instead, she made noises in other ways such as clapping hands or hitting things together.

In mammals, birds, frogs, and crocodiles, the voice communication appeared separately during the past 100 million to 200 million years, depending on the animal group. The study also found that the origins of voice communication are closely related to the night lifestyle.

According to the study's authors, this is logical because once the light is not available to show visible signals such as color patterns to intimidate a competitor or attract comrades, the transmission of signals by voice becomes a definite advantage.

My voice continues in two-thirds of vertebrates
By extrapolating the different species in the sample, study authors estimate that voice communication exists in more than two-thirds of terrestrial vertebrates. While some animal groups easily come to mind because of their vocal talents such as birds, frogs and mammals, crocodiles as well as some turtles have the ability to speak.

The researchers also found that even in species that turned into daytime activity, the ability to communicate by sound remained. "It appears there is an advantage to voice communication when you are active at night, but there is no hindrance to using this feature when it turns into a daytime activity," said Waynes, a study researcher from the University of Arizona.

"We have examples of phoneme communication in groups of frogs and mammals that have become diurnal, although frogs and mammals began operating at night hundreds of millions of years ago," added Waynes.

Also, according to Lewis, most of the birds continued to use voice communications even after the birds became daytime active. Interestingly, as all bird watchers note, many birds sing at dawn. This "dawn singing" can be a relic of the nocturnal strains of birds.

In addition, the research showed that voice communication appears to be a significantly stable original feature. The authors of the study raise the possibility that once a species acquires the ability to communicate by voice, the tendency to retain this ability may be more stable than the use of other types of communication signals, such as discoloration or the use of the body expansion method.