Bullfrogs hearing capacity
Bullfrogs hearing capacityThe bullfrog belongs to the family Ranidae and is commonly known for their deep resonant croaks, large body size and large ears (tympani). These frogs have a body size of 20cm/ 8in and have legs that are longer than the body (25cm/10in). They reside in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Africa, and many others in quiet lakes and ponds. Bullfrogs are very aggressive when defending their territories and do not hesitate to attack invaders, even if a frog. Being that the bullfrogs have large ears, they should be able to hear many sounds from great distances, but we shouldn't assume this. I would like to design an experiment that would enable me to determine the range of frequencies that a bullfrog can hear using operant conditioning. Once I have determined the latter, I would like to see how well a bullfrog is able to distinguish a specific frequency from other frequencies.
For both experiments, I would need to obtain a number of bullfrogs from a natural habitat and place them in the lab made habitat, which would be similar to the one that they were removed from. Hopefully, the frogs will adapted to the new habitat and carry on as they did in their old habitat. Tampered bullfrogs such as those raised in labs or pets would not be used because the results would be inaccurate. The inaccuracy would be that these "tampered frogs" have been out of the wild for so long that they would not have the same range of frequency as those in the wild. I would first like to do this experiment on the male bullfrogs because of their deeper croaks, observe the data and then possibly repeat the experiment on the female species.
In the first part of the experiment, I want to observe whether the bullfrog can hear the frequencies sent out to it and if so will it move in the direction that the sound is coming from. Inside the new habitat there are two pathways that connect to a small platform about 2.5 inches high. The set up is high enough so that the frogs can not hop out (measurements of how high they jump will be observed and noted in order to build the design.). In front and behind the platform is a wall that the frog can see through, these walls extend out to the pathways and continue for about 1ft. At the end of the walls, the frog is free and able to roam around. The purpose of these walls are to separate the pathways so that the frog will have to chose which way the sound is coming from. There will also be two high tech speakers, one at each corner of the habitat (facing the platform) raised 2.5 inches from the habitat floor that will send out a frequency randomly from either speaker. The...
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