Tiny frog in Brazil emits screams that humans can’t hear

This article forms a part of the Science for All newsletter that takes the jargon out of science and puts the fun in! Recently, scientists have found that one tiny species of frog endemic to the Brazilian Atlantic rainforest emits ultrasonic sounds that are inaudible to humans but can scare off predators. In their work, published in the journal Acta Ethologica earlier this year, Brazilian scientists from the Institute of Biology, São Paulo, and the Project Dacnis preserve recorded the ultrasonic ‘screams’ of the tiny leaf litter frog while in the rainforest of Brazil. One of the scientists involved in this study, Mariana Retuci Pontes, had previously suspected the frogs used ultrasonic screams as a defence mechanism after she had come across what looked like a Hensel’s big-headed frog in Brazil’s rainforests. The finding that the leaf litter frog emits ultrasonic sounds has kicked up questions for the researchers about which predators are affected by the screams, how they react to it and what the scream’s ultimate purpose is.