If you sit long enough...and listen...

I never fancied myself an acoustic ecologist until I began to read studies of songbirds and the information that could be gained from asking questions about variation in species' dialects, and phylogeographic range affecting diversity of calls and song; and in some cases what was ventured to be called derivation in culture.

There is a reason little of this sort of work remains to be done on subterranean rodents. Most don't call, or sing for that matter. Coruros are amazing little novelties of nature. But I am begining to wonder more and more, what is the MAIN purpose of this call? I am 3 weeks into intensive study of these critters and finding some very intriguing results. And always developing more questions.

For example, I have identified a bird that calls at the same syllable frequency(number of call per length of time) of the coruro. However, if one listens carefully you can distinguish the frequency, or pitch, as being much higher. What is this bird? What is it's role in the ecosystem? What is the purpose of the call itself?

Another question that is on everyone's mind is whether or not coruros have calls that distinguish terrestrial predators from aerial ones. In degus, the answer appears to be 'no', but coruros are not as exposed as degus and we do not yet have a strong list of known predators at Rinconada. We can only make conjectures. We are seeing an interesting trend where juveniles are likely to alarm call at anything that moves or touches them. These alarm calls start as early as 2 weeks of age, but they do not begin foraging for themselves until they are approximately 42 days old (http://heritage-pets.tripod.com/id63.html). But does this call deviate over time to specify the type of predator?

Also, we have noticed other animals using old coruro burrows as homes, ranging from other rodents, birds and even reptiles. Are coruros facilitators for these other animals? Would they exist in this environment without the coruros present? Would the huilie be so abundant if the coruros were not possibly cultivating it, leaving smaller bulbs in abandoned food cashes? This seems to be a possible theory as we are begging to notice clumps of these lilly-like plants rising from the earth. I cannot wait to see them bloom this Austral spring.

All these thoughts draw me in as I sit quietly on the hillside, observing the colony and waiting for little black heads to appear from the ground. And then, you begin to listen for the coruros' calls. But after a time you begin to hear more than you could imagine: the grass shedding the frost from it's stalks in the early morning sun, the birds chattering as they flock across the small valley, brightly colored Loica singing and gossiping all around you, the annoying juvenile buzzard eagle (Junior) calling to his parents to feed him, and the endearing degus appearing from their burrows to 'cheap, cheap, cheap' at you. But of course the disrupting sounds of civilization that play the base in this orchestra are not to be forgotten. The distant sounds of airplanes, trains, emergency sirens and military academy practicing their cadence day in and day out. But the story of a world once unknown to you finally becomes just a tiny bit clearer as you sink into it and you become a part of it...and it a part of you.