Turtles and tortoises make noises to communicate and some ‘won’t stop chatting’

New research sheds light on sounds used by animals previously believed to be uncommunicative, Mustafa Qadri writes.

This groundbreaking discovery in turtles and tortoises is believed to date back 400 million years ago (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

A groundbreaking study has found turtles and tortoises use noises to communicate and some "won't stop chatting".

Researchers conducted a study on 53 species that were believed to be uncommunicative, including tortoises, tuatara reptiles and lungfish - a freshwater vertebrate that can also breathe air - and found they made many different types of sounds as a form of acoustic communication.

Lead author of the Zurich University study, Gabriel Jorgewich-Cohen, said that some of the turtles studied made “many different types of sounds” while others “wouldn’t stop chatting”. Turtles, tortoises and some of the other animals studied such as caecilians made a range of clicks, croaks, crackles and chirps.

Mr Jorgewich-Cohen said: “The idea was to focus on animals that are commonly, historically considered to be non-vocal. I wanted to go deep on reporting these animals that are not known to vocalise and try to understand this.

“There’s a lot of clicking, some of them sound like a purring cat, some like a creaking door. The caecilian sounded like a frog mixed with a burp. The snapping turtle sounds like Darth Vader.”

This form of communication is believed to date as long back as 400 million years ago.

Singing birds, croaking frogs or barking dogs are some other well-known examples of this form of acoustic communication. These noises play a fundamental role in parental care, mate attraction and various other behaviours.

The study captured audio recordings of the turtle species making quiet noises, while the red-footed tortoise made a low noise which researchers described as being between a croak and a bark.

The international research team set up equipment to record the 53 species, with each recorded for 24 hours. They were able to collect audio recordings underwater of noises made by lungfish using special cameras.

The most obvious form of communication was produced by males, while courting with females or during conflicts with other males.

Mr Jorgewich-Cohen added: “This, along with a broad literature-based dataset including 1800 different species covering the entire spectrum shows that vocal communication is not only widespread in land vertebrates, but also evidence acoustic abilities in several groups previously considered non-vocal.”

Their findings were reported in Nature Communications.