Antonio Bulog
sent me an Xmas card with a trivia about how frogs make their pitch.
It seems Bulog got hold of a news item which appeared in the Chicago
Sun Times how a researcher for the Field Museum in Chicago has found
that an inch-long Metaphrynella sundana - a Borneo tree hole frog
- "is so skilled of matching exactly the pitch of their wooing
"beeps" to the resonance of their holes." Bulog quoted
two outstanding frog phenomena:
"First,to some extent, the male tunes to his own nook. Just as
a pipe on an organ has a certain tone, a cavity in a tree has its
pitch. A frog that manages to beep just right generates a resonance
effect, and females can hear his stronger call from farther away"
"Second, the frog will try harder when it gets the right sound,
presumably to become "super sexy."
What on earth is Bulog talking about? Is it possible that amphibians
could change voice to fit the environment? Yes, according to Mr. Harold
Voris the Field Museum's curator.
Bulog's xmas card has a postcript. Doc Simp, do you know that Santa's
reindeers are all females? It's those darn antlers, he said.
But that's another story.
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Arsenio Falihan from Barangay Eniwer, Pinas reports an emerging presence
of mice in his neighborhood. Rats? Omigosh! There goes Eniwer's plans
to attract tourists for Wow Philippines 2003.
Wait a minute. Not yet. No need to hurry a call for the Pied Piper.
Arsenio, like Bulog writes funny.
It seems that what he was referring to is the "digital divide"
that exists in Barangay Eniwer. Arsenio remembers a kid during the
opening of a PC lab station in the poblacion. The kid stayed the whole
day clicking the mouse of a PC with gusto. Nowadays, Arsenio added,
there are now two cybercafes in Barangay Eniwer and the kid has dreamed
of becoming a web designer!
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