The South-East Asian gecko species the tokay gecko (Gecko gecko) turns out to have a few handy breathing tricks up its sleeve for its long and loud mating call. Between the two notes of this call (which sound as though it is calling its own name: GE-KO!) it takes a lightning-fast micro-breath lasting just 100 milliseconds. Previously, such a breathing strategy for sustaining calls or song had only been found in songbirds, Danish biologists write on 23 September in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
For the discovery, the researchers did not go out hunting with a microphone themselves; instead they gathered sixteen video clips of calling male tokay geckos from YouTube and analysed the abdominal movements and audio using purpose-built AI models. By examining the spot patterns of the lizards, they were able to determine that the footage featured seven individual males.
In addition to the micro-breaths, the gecko species also employs the so-called vocal fry register to conserve breath: one of the lowest possible vocal sounds, in which the vibrations are audible as separate pulses, producing a kind of creaky-voice effect. The researchers also observed that the animal closes its ears with each call, presumably to avoid being deafened by its own sound.