WILDLIFE

“CLICK! CLICK! SQUEAK!”

FOR MANY YEARS, scientists believed turtles to be voiceless. But now we know there are more than 45 species of turtles that can vocalize — and University of Toronto researchers are eavesdropping on some chatty snapping turtle hatchlings. They found the turtles made a variety of noises, from clicks and squeaks to a kind of fart sound while still in the egg — and that the vocalizations became progressively more complex as the hatchlings broke their way through their eggshells and started to emerge from their nests. It’s hypothesized that the sounds are cues for the other hatchlings to get moving so they all hatch at once (and thus are less likely to be picked off by predators).

Social dilemma