Alligators Sing! (But Not to Attract Mates)

Chinese alligators like a good sing-a-long, but they don't worry about carrying a tune. They also don't much care what the opposite sex thinks of the song choice, according to a story on National Geographic News.

Researchers with the Chinese Academy of Sciences ran some tests to see whether alligator "songs"--it's really more like sustained, extremely loud croaking, which the researchers compare the sound to thunder--attract mates to the singer. Surprisingly, it didn't work that way.

And yet, the alligators do seem to sing more during mating season. So far, the best guess is that the songs are really a way of saying,"Hey, I'm an alligator, too. And I'm over here!" Which, in the context of mating, is just the time-honored tradition of hoping the opposite sex notices that you exist. LINK: Boingboing