Environment

Mobile phones record koalas' conversations

by Amy Judd | November 25, 2008 at 09:39 am

545 views | 20 Recommendations | 7 comments

Koalas do talk to each other, but scientists don't know how, or how often. But a group of scientists in Australia are using mobile phones to understand what the bears could be saying to each other, and how they could use this to help conserve the threatened species as they are threatened by habitat destruction.

The koalas on St Bees Island off northeast Australia, were tagged with tracking devices, and then the scientists placed mobile phones in the trees to turn on every 30 mins and record two minutes of the bears bellowing to each other.

The mobiles, charged by solar power and car batteries, record the koala bellows, then download the recordings to a computer at the University of Queensland in Brisbane.

"Koala bellows can go from really quite short, sharp, and quite agitated sounding bellows to long, slow, deep bellows that can last for over a minute," said researcher Bill Ellis.

"Interestingly most of the bellowing seems to occur around midnight, not around dawn or dusk when we thought it might've occurred," he said on Tuesday.

Ellis said he was studying whether male koalas communicate by bellowing to each other to mark out territory and whether bellowing was used to attract females during breeding season.

"Over the breeding season males are quiet active at the start but their movements die down and females have a spike in movement somewhere in the breeding season," Ellis said.

"After a male and female encounter, and we can't see what they are doing, the female lets out a high-pitched scream and immediately after the male emits a loud bellow," he said.

This study could help manage the populations by lettting officials know when the best time is to introduce a new animal to the population, and when the best time could be to allow changes to koala habitats.

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matte

at 16:37 on November 25th, 2008

bad

Amy Judd

at 16:57 on November 25th, 2008

What are you referring to? Can you be more specific?

Queens

at 17:21 on November 25th, 2008

I just had a look at the website on your profile page, The Real News... and if you think this story is "bad" I'm not sure how your 'Condom Measuring Tape' story fares in comparison? Is that real news?

I don't get it?

Amy Judd

at 18:52 on November 25th, 2008

Please don't post baiting comments about other member's work - it's against our Code of Conduct. Thanks.

matte

at 23:09 on November 25th, 2008

that is a feed from another site, if you had followed the link you'd have seen that. Like highlighting here, but YRN makes no claims about legitamacy or values ;)

Bad because of the radio waves that phones emit - kolas being placed at risk of brain cancer perhaps from mobile phones being so close? And what if the phone RINGS - might the shock harm them!

Uwe Paschen

at 22:53 on November 25th, 2008

Interesting find, and a new use for Mobil Phones. Animals do speak and communicate rather efficiently with one another, the problem we Humans may be a little bit to arrogant to even try to understand them and respect there intelligence.

harringtola

at 07:27 on December 3rd, 2008

Not sure if this is good or bad for the Koalas but it is a very interesting story. I expect that as with much of what man does, it might not be fully thought through in terms of impact.