Ruta panorámica

This kind of nightlife is more lively and frenzied than the one in a city club. Snippet of a sound landscape recorded in our house near el Toro Negro forest in Puerto Rico, where we could hear the deafening, yet luscious and vivid sounds of many insects, birds and frogs among unidentified buzz of distant activity. In Puerto Rico frogs receive the onomatopoeic name of “coqui” because their sound resembles more the chirping and singing that birds usually do. Their call is composed by two syllables: deeper [koo] to put off other males and mark their territory, and higher [kee] to attract females (Narins, P. and Capranica, R. 1976. Sexual differences in the auditory system of the tree frog Eleutherodactylus coqui. Science, 192(4237), pp.378-380). Reaching up to 95dB from 3 feet away, the species heard in this recording is Eleutherodactylus coqui, arguably one of the loudest frogs in the world (Narins, P. 1995. Frog Communication. Scientific American, 273(2), pp.78-83). I was surrounded by bugs, maybe because they liked the sweet smell of the coconut shampoo I had just used. There was a lot of fireflies around too, but I’m not sure if they make any audible sound. Recorded with a Zoom iQ6.