Comments on: Crocodiles signal hatching time by calling from inside their eggs http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2008/06/25/crocodiles-signal-hatching-time-by-calling-from-inside-their-eggs/ A science salon hosted by National Geographic Magazine Wed, 22 May 2013 17:47:42 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.2-alpha By: Virgil Cottongim http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2008/06/25/crocodiles-signal-hatching-time-by-calling-from-inside-their-eggs/#comment-619 Virgil Cottongim Thu, 15 Sep 2011 02:18:34 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2008/06/25/crocodiles-signal-hatching-time-by-calling-from-inside-their-eggs/#comment-619 Isn’t this begging the question? To state the vital importance of the egg calls is to preach to the chior, so to speak, it is instinct, millions of years of ‘umphing’ which brings the mother to provide the protection. Much like the baby animals of the plain who are able to get up and run from predator within minutes of birth. It is instinct for the hatchlings to ‘umph’ when they begin to brake out of the shell. In the jungles of Florida, it is relative quiet, very little noise. Your Playback works because it sounds like a new hatchling, I suggest the ‘noise’ played to them confused the young and disrupted the normal call sequence.

]]> By: arensb http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2008/06/25/crocodiles-signal-hatching-time-by-calling-from-inside-their-eggs/#comment-618 arensb Thu, 26 Jun 2008 04:27:31 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2008/06/25/crocodiles-signal-hatching-time-by-calling-from-inside-their-eggs/#comment-618

it pays the siblings to synchronise their birth, to make sure that the entire clutch is ready when mum makes her appearance.

Ah, that makes sense, I think. When I got to the part about how only 10% of the random-noise group hatched, I thought this would be a drawback in those cases where some calamity befell the nest and all but one egg died.
But presumably that’s a comparatively rare occurrence (if predators can get to one egg, they can most likely get to all of them). The more common case is one in which there are either several hatchlings, or none.

]]>