What animal was first to have a voice?
Our modern world seems to be full of talking animals, The dogs bark and the frogs croak, the geese gossip and the monkeys chatter. Most of the sizable animals have voices and use them, each in his own way. But the animal kingdom had been on earth for millions of years before it spoke up for itself. The creatures that lived through the dawn of earth history were silent,
The birds have been singing for perhaps sixty million summers. Dogs began to bark and sheep began to bleat at around the same time the birds started their singing lessons. This was when the long reign of the dinosaurs was coming to an end and the modern Age of Mammals was dawning.
The voices of these mammal ancestors may have been harsh and limited. For nature tends to improve things and make them more beautiful as time goes on. We do not know what kind of sounds were made by the first animals to have voices, because there was no one there to record them. We know about the bodies of ancient animals, because we can reconstruct them from fossil remains. But we only can make an educated guess about animal sounds.
A true voice, of course, is made by air and vocal cords. The cricket, who sings by rubbing his wings together, cannot be said to have a true voice. Our modern reptiles have vocal cords, so perhaps the mighty dinosaurs,had voices. Certainly they did not utter much sense with their voices, for they were very short of brains. But we can imagine terrible roars of anger and perhaps challenge coming from their powerful throats.
The dinosaurs might have been the noisiest animals on earth, but they were not the first to speak up for themselves. They shared their world
with certain animals that had developed voices long before.
The first animals to develop voices were the frogs, and they have descended from amphibian ancestors who crept out of the ancient seas some 300 million years ago.
The first true frogs appeared in the Jurassic Period of earth’s history, about 150 million years ago. We do not know whether they descended from vocal ancestors, but the first frogs most likely croaked. A modern frog croaks with his smiling jaws shut tight. The air is pushed back and forth from his lungs over his vocal cords and certain male frogs have vocal sacs behind the ear drums which can be used to make the croak louder and more ringing. These tricks were probably used by those froggy ancestors who were the first talking animals.
The various frogs across the land will soon be tuning up for their spring concerts. Each type of frog sings his own note, high or lows loud or soft. It is fun to listen to the chorus and pick out the loud boom of the bullfrog or the high tweep of the peeper. Each frog is croaking for a reason, a very good reason. It is springtime and he is singing to his lady love.