It has recently come to my attention that several websites (e.g. wikipedia) report that male anoles produce ultrasonic hisses while fighting. I’ve been trying to track down the source of this information, but I can’t find any reference to ultrasonic sound production in anoles in the scientific literature. Does anyone know the source of this information? Can anyone confirm that anoles are capable of producing ultrasonic sounds? I’d be grateful to anyone who can shed any light on this rumor.
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Daniel Scantlebury
I’m not sure of any citations, but I recommend examining literature on Brookesia leaf chameleons, which produce high frequency vibrations, as a starting point.
Christopher V. Anderson
Not sure about in anoles, but in chameleons they are infrasounds rather than ultrasounds.
Justin Henningsen
Whaaaa?!? This would be quite relevant to my work, but I’ve never seen these claims. I’m curious to see what the community knows.
slailvaux
Another approach might be to ask whether anoles can even hear “ultrasonic hissing”. There is very little data on anole hearing – only two species have been studied (guess which ones!) – but based on what we do know it seems unlikely. The few studies I’m aware of show that while anoles are sensitive to a relatively wide frequency range (for a lizard – a wider range than Tokay geckos in fact), that range only extends up to around 7 kHz in A. carolinensis (Brittan-Powell et al. 2010) and 7.7 kHz in A. sagrei (Manley & Gallo 1997), which is well within the range of human hearing. The upper limit is estimated at around 8kHz in A. sagrei based on the number, length and arrangement of hair cells in the ear.
One caveat is that these studies are usually done via some form of external otoacoustic emission (OAE), which are sounds produced by the ear itself when stimulated at a particular frequency. If you get a response at a particular frequency, then that suggests the animal can hear it. I don’t think anyone has ever tested for ultrasonic hearing in anoles using this method – however, based on the morphology of the basal papilla, one wouldn’t expect anoles to be sensitive to ultrasound. Maybe some other anole species do this though, or perhaps they hear through their lungs as some lizards can apparently do…
Refs:
Brittan-Powell, E.F., et al., The auditory brainstem response in two lizard species. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2010. 128(2): p. 787-794.
Manley, G.A. and L. Gallo, Otoacoustic emissions, hair cells, and myosin motors. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1997. 102(2): p. 1049-1055.
Michael D.
I know this post is old, and hopefully you’ll be notified of my comment. I recently observed something peculiar about the ear system of Bahaman Anole….something about which I’ve found no other information. There’s a membrane inside the head that opens and closes a direct pathway between ear holes. You can see straight through their heads at times. Has anyone else ever noticed this??
Maria Campano
I have been working with an old man who has taught me that we should be very careful with regard to comments about the sensory capabilities of animals from a human perspective. Let’s remember that ultrasonic sounds are most likely out of the range of the acoustic capabilities of anoles.
A long time ago, it was proposed that sound was used in social communication in anoles (take a look at Jenssen’s papers). As far as I know, no one has ever followed this research.
Anonymous
My brown anole makes hissing noises when I try to play with it like pet it from head down and I think they make the noises when the are stressed or lonely or your too rough with them so that’s my idea of it
Daniel
I can confirm this. I recently got a big aggressive male brown anole to hiss when I poke it on the head. It was audible. It was extremely aggressive too. It was literally jumping at me and snapping at my fingers. It was clearly agitated.