Frequency signatures: Common Warthog to Crab Spider
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 553–576.
Common Warthog
Reversing Into Someone Else's Hole
Kneeling • Grazing • Backing in
That makes it a mid-frequency system: steady, practical and organised around borrowed structure.
Common Water Flea
A Helmet Grown on Cue
An animal in water with no predator present, smooth-headed and without spines, putting everything into growth and reproduction
The system is one of the standard demonstrations that an organism can carry the genes for two quite different bodies and construct whichever the environment calls for, so it operates as a bimodal system.
Common Wolf Snake
Wearing Another Snake's Bands
A pattern of pale bands on a dark body closely resembling that of the kraits it shares its range with • No venom of consequence and no capacity to back the warning up • Predators and people treating it as dangerous on the strength of the pattern alone
Because activity is nightly, it operates as a low-frequency system.
Common Wombat
Armoured Rump in a Tunnel
Burrowed • Slow • Retained
That makes it a low-frequency system: slow, retentive and built around a place rather than a behaviour.
Common Wood Pigeon
Forest-Field Shuttle Flyer
Rhythmic • Commuting • Forager
That pattern makes the wood pigeon a single mid-frequency system, organized around rhythmic commuting between woodland shelter and open feeding grounds.
Cone-headed Grasshopper
Spring-Loaded Blade Jumper
Coiled • Reactive • Burst
Because the animal’s structure is built around holding a prepared state and then spending energy in brief, forceful jumps whenever a route or threat appears, this is a high-frequency burst system rather than a steady, moderate one.
Convict Tang
Striped Schooling Display
Rhythmic • Grouped • Visible
That makes the convict tang a mid-frequency system, defined by steady, rhythmic group activity anchored by always-on visual cohesion.
Coquerel's Sifaka
Vertical Cling and Lateral Leap
Clinging • Leaping • Daily
Since the day is a repeating cycle of clinging, feeding and leaping, it is a mid-frequency system.
Corkwing Wrasse
Males That Build, Males That Do Not
Building a nest of algae in a rock crevice • Displaying in bright breeding colours • Courting and then guarding and fanning the eggs
Since the two run side by side through the season, this is an adaptive system.
Corn Snake
Scent-Trail Tongue Sampling
Trailing • Deliberate • Low-burn
That makes it a low-frequency system: patient, cheap to run and organised around following information rather than chasing prey.
Corsac Fox
A Fox That Does Not Hold Ground
Ranging without a territory • Taking over marmot burrows • Moving south from snow
This is a mid-frequency system.
Coscoroba Swan
A Call That Names Itself
Feeding • Calling • Pairing
That makes it a mid-frequency system: steady surface feeding organised by one repeated signal rather than by elaborate display.
Cotton Bud Moth
Filling Air With Signals
Males locating females by following a plume of pheromone released in very small quantities • Synthetic pheromone released from dispensers across a whole field at far higher concentration • Males unable to follow any single plume because the entire air carries the signal, so mating rates collapse without anything being killed
Because the search is continuous, it operates as a mid-frequency system.
Cotton Pygmy Goose
Light Enough for Lily Leaves
Surface-picking • Buoyant • Lily-bound
That makes it a bimodal system: surface feeding among lilies and rest in cover.
Cotton-top Tamarin
Wide Call Repertoire Signalling
Calling • Specific • All day
Because calling runs continuously through the day, it is a mid-frequency system.
Couch's Spadefoot
Years Underground, Days in Water
Sealed • Dormant • Indefinite
Enormous dormancy punctuated by an explosive window makes this a bimodal system.
Cougar
Wide Patrol, Cached Kills
Solitary • Ranging • Reading cover
Those two unlike parts make this a bimodal system, a mid-frequency patrol that exists to set up a rare high-frequency strike.
Cow
Continuous Rumen Fermentation
Cropping • Regurgitating • Chewing it again
Because the system is one continuous conversion at a steady rate, it operates as a mid-frequency system.
Cownose Ray
Sandy Seafloor Wingline
Aligned • Gliding • Forage-line
That makes the cownose ray a bimodal system: a dominant mid-frequency, coordinated sweep mode, with essential but brief high-frequency bursts for capture and escape layered on top.
Coyote
Group Size Tracks the Prey
Alone • Small prey • Unseen
That makes it an adaptive system: the operating state is selected by context rather than fixed.
Coypu
Nipples High on the Flank
Mammary glands positioned along the upper sides of the body rather than on the belly • Young able to reach them while the mother floats with her back at the surface • Suckling continuing during swimming so the litter is never separated from water
Because nursing recurs continuously, it operates as a mid-frequency system.
Cozumel Coati
Shrunk to Fit One Island
Nosing • Turning over • Remembering
Continuous social searching over bounded ground makes this a mid-frequency system.
Cozumel Raccoon
A Dwarfed Crab-Hunter in Mangrove Roots
Nocturnal • Crab-eating • Mangrove-bound
Because the system is a steady nightly foraging routine along one kind of shoreline, it is a mid-frequency system.
Crab Spider
Open-Armed Ambush Without a Web
Waiting • Cryptic • Open-armed
The system is bimodal: long, cryptic waiting punctuated by a very brief seizure.