Seven new species of tree frogs have been discovered in Madagascar, and the researchers who found them said their high-pitched calls resemble “sound effects from the sci-fi television series Star Trek.”
All the new species come from the frog genus Boophis and emit “bird-like” whistling sounds in their communication with other frogs, not croaking as is typical. Professor Miguel Vences from the Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany, who led the research team, said: “That is why we named the frogs after Kirk, Picard, Sisko, Janeway, Archer, Burnham, and Pike – seven of the most iconic captains from the sci-fi series.”
Researcher believe rare tree frog discovery is in the spirit of Star Trek
Assistant Professor Mark Scherz of the Natural History Museum of Denmark, joked that “there weren’t any phasers or stars in the rainforests of Madagascar, but there was quite a lot of ‘trekking.’ Explaining in more detail, he went on to say “We had to undertake major expeditions to remote forest fragments and mountain peaks. A few species are found in places accessible to tourists, but the rest are deep in the rainforest. There’s a real sense of scientific discovery and exploration here, which we think is in the spirit of Star Trek.”
The male tree frogs ‘promote’ themselves to females with a sound straight out of Star Trek!
The calls of these frogs are known as “advertisement calls” which could almost be called a type of self-promotion that, according to the researchers, may convey information about the male frog’s suitability as a mate to females. This particular group live along fast-flowing streams in the most mountainous regions of Madagascar and is very noisy, which may explain why the frogs call at such high pitches and unlike their European counterparts, call, rather than croak to communicate.
Jörn Köhler, Senior Curator of Vertebrate Zoology at the Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt in Germany who played a key role in analyzing the frogs’ calls, commented that “Each of the seven species makes a distinctive series of these high-pitched whistles that has allowed us to tell them apart from each other, and from other frogs which is also why we have named each of them as individual species of tree frog.”
