Frequency signatures: Common House Gecko to Common Prawn
Each card gives a species’ behavioural archetype, its frequency — how often it commits effort and how long each commitment lasts — and a waveform tracing that rhythm.
Frequency signatures
Each waveform traces one species’ working rhythm — where it spends effort, and where it waits. 2,327 species, A–Z; showing 505–528.
Common House Gecko
Setal Adhesion Wall Grip
Vertical • Waiting • Nightly
Because returns come from repeated small captures at a held position, it is a mid-frequency system.
Common House Spider
Lines That Snatch Prey Up
Building a tangle above with taut silk lines running down to the ground • Gluing the lower ends and leaving them under tension • Having a walking insect stick, snap the line and be lifted off its feet
Since triggers occur through the day, it operates as a mid-frequency system.
Common Hoverfly
Haltere-Stabilised Station Keeping
Beating • Correcting • Darting
Continuous heavy expenditure and millisecond reactions make this a single high-frequency system.
Common Hydra
Continuous Budding Bodyflow
Ongoing • Cellular • Turnover
The defining rhythm is a steady, repeating cycle of growth, sloughing, and regrowth across the whole body, making this a mid-frequency, single-mode renewal system.
Common Kingfisher
Correcting for Where the Fish Is Not
Perched • Fixed • Calculating
That makes it a bimodal system: long still calculation and one committed blind strike.
Common Land Iguana
Cactus Water Reservoir Grazer
Slow • Cactus-fed • Reserve
A life organised around a stored-water food source, low daily expenditure and a long horizon produces a conservative, low-frequency system.
Common Limpet
Clamped Cone Returning Home
Clamped • Sealed • Home-bound
That makes it a bimodal system: clamped rest and tidal grazing.
Common Loon
Solid Bones, Legs Set Back
Sinking • Pursuing • Calling
Repeated diving through a long day makes this a mid-frequency system.
Common Madagascar Cat Snake
Slit-Pupil Dusk Hunt
Nocturnal • Searching • Slit-pupilled
Falling light, not chance or hunger, starts each hunt, so the same search recurs night after night and the snake runs as a regular mid-frequency system.
Common Marble
Silken Leaf Roll Shelter
Sheltered • Patient • Frugal
That makes this a low-frequency system built around one protective build and long, frugal use of that shelter.
Common Marmoset
Clinging Kin Nursery
Rhythmic • Coordinated • Kin-led
That makes the marmoset a mid-frequency system: not a slow hoarder or a pure sprinter, but a steady, coordinated pattern of repeated, shared actions that keep both food intake and infant protection going together.
Common Midwife Toad
Leg-Wound Eggs, Timed Release
Loaded • Damp-bound • Slow
Few eggs, long investment and very high survival per egg make this a single low-frequency system.
Common Minke Whale
Small Rorqual Built for Agility
Travelling • Searching • Low-profile
That makes it a bimodal system: steady travelling and searching between prey patches and explosive lunges and sprints.
Common Molly
Broods From a Single Mating
Internal fertilisation through a modified anal fin acting as a gonopodium • Storing viable sperm in folds of the female's reproductive tract for months • Producing several successive broods of live young from that one stored supply
Because broods recur on a cycle of weeks, it operates as a mid-frequency system.
Common Murre
An Egg That Rolls in a Circle
Whirring • Direct • Costly
That makes it a bimodal system: costly marginal flight and deep sustained wing-powered diving.
Common Musk Turtle
Aquatic Musk Perimeter
Cautious • Grounded • Local
This produces a bimodal system: a low-frequency, place-bound routine that minimizes contact, backed by a high-frequency, short-lived but very memorable chemical boundary when that quiet perimeter is breached.
Common Myna
Taking Cavities Already Occupied
Locating an occupied nest hole • Evicting the residents and destroying eggs or chicks • Holding the cavity and breeding in it
Since takeovers and foraging recur through the day, it operates as a mid-frequency system.
Common Nighthawk
Twilight-Camouflage Insect Sweep
Still • Blended • Waiting
That architecture—long periods of camouflaged waiting anchored around ground cover and open perches, punctuated by brief, high-intensity twilight feeding—makes the common nighthawk a bimodal system with a low-frequency resting mode and a high-frequency burst-feeding mode.
Common Octopus
Neurons in the Arms, Colour in the Skin
Denning • Sheltered • Brooding
That makes it a bimodal system: sheltered den time and exploratory foraging.
Common Opossum
A Collapse Beyond Its Control
Hissing and baring fifty teeth at a threat • Collapsing involuntarily into a rigid open-mouthed state if that fails • Remaining unresponsive for minutes to hours while producing a foul anal secretion
Since encounters recur through the night, it operates as a mid-frequency system.
Common Pill Woodlouse
Sealed Sphere Water Retention
Curling into a closed ball • Plates interlocking • Losing nothing from inside
Since everything runs slowly in the damp dark, it operates as a low-frequency system.
Common Poorwill
Ground Torpor Pulse
Sunken • Still • Saving
Because its whole system alternates between deep, extended torpor and tightly timed bursts of foraging, the Common Poorwill operates as a bimodal low-and-high frequency system built around torpor timing.
Common Potoo
Seeing Through a Closed Eyelid
Upright on a stump • Eyes shut • Watching anyway
That is a bimodal system.
Common Prawn
A Body Light Passes Through
Holding among weed and in rockpools with a shell that transmits light • Being visible only as thin lines and two dark eyes • Flicking the abdomen to shoot backwards when detected
Since escape responses recur in fractions of a second, it operates as a high-frequency system.