VISUAL ARCHIVE / IMAGE STORY
A Shared Range Across Many Signals
A surveyed set of animal communication rates often falls between about 0.5 and 4 hertz.
Across insects, amphibians, birds, fish, crustaceans, primates and marine mammals, radically different signals repeatedly cluster inside a similar slow rhythm.
THE OBSERVATION
What we can actually see.
The study assembled examples across multiple taxa and modalities. Clustering in this dataset invites explanation, but the sampling is selective and does not mean every species or signal has the same tempo.
THE ILLUSTRATION
What the artwork imagines.
The pictured creatures are illustrative representatives, not a census of every tested species. Their simultaneous signaling was not observed in one ecosystem.
FROM THE ILLUSTRATED ARTICLE
The story that inspired it.
The cross-species study reports a clustering of signal rates and develops a receiver-based explanation; the article then explores explicitly speculative extensions. A surveyed set of animal communication rates often falls between about 0.5 and 4 hertz.
Read Life May Be Speaking in the Same Hidden RhythmCHECK THE RECORD
The image interprets the research below. Follow the original work for the measurements and limits behind the scene.
PLOS Biology: cross-species communication tempoOTHER IMAGE STORIES
Many Voices, Similar Paces
Two Rhythms, Different Causes
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