Frequency signatures: Crab-eating Fox to Cuban Solenodon

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 577–600.

Crab-eating Fox

MID

Diet Set by Whatever the Season Left

Wet season • Floodplain • Crabs

That makes it an adaptive system: the operating state is set by the season rather than by the species.

Crane Fly

MID

Legs That Come Off

Flying weakly on long trailing legs that catch on everything • Shedding a leg at a fracture point when it is grasped • Continuing to fly and mate with several legs missing

Since encounters recur, it operates as a mid-frequency system.

Crest-tailed Mulgara

LOW

Nocturnal Burrow Reserve Hunter

Sheltered • Rested • Stockpiling

This creates a bimodal rhythm: a dominant low-frequency, reserve-and-shelter mode punctuated by necessary high-frequency nocturnal foraging bursts.

Crested Auklet

MID

Multichannel Colony Beacon

Layered • Rhythmic • Social

That makes the Crested Auklet a mid-frequency system: it runs on steady, rhythmic, multi-sensory communication woven through everyday colony activity.

Crested Berrypecker

MID

Montane Canopy Threader

Rhythmic • Precise • Niche-fit

Because its survival depends on this ongoing, well-matched rhythm of movement and feeding instead of extreme endurance or explosive bursts, its system expresses a single, mid-frequency pattern of niche-precise activity.

Crested Caracara

MID

Ground-Walking Carrion and Roadside Patrol

Walking • Patrolling • Scavenging

Because the bird repeats these daily circuits through places where food is reliably exposed, rather than waiting for one fast strike, its whole system settles into a single steady mid-frequency rhythm.

Crested Coua

MID

Clambering Cuckoo Gleaning the Canopy

Clambering • Gleaning • Balancing

That makes it a bimodal system: close canopy gleaning and brief morning sunning.

Crested Fireback

LOW

A Face Filled With Blood

Bare blue facial skin with lappets that can be engorged with blood within seconds • Those wattles swelling and intensifying in colour during display and deflating afterwards • Colour and size depending directly on circulation and condition rather than on a fixed structure

Because displays are seasonal, it operates as a low-frequency system.

Crested Gecko

MID

A Tail Dropped Only Once

Climbing on adhesive toe pads and a gripping tail tip • Shedding the tail to escape a grip • Living the rest of its life without one

Since climbing and foraging recur nightly, it operates as a mid-frequency system.

Crested Oropendola

MID

Hanging Colony on an Isolated Tree

Weaving • Colonial • Suspended

That makes it a mid-frequency system: steady construction and communal occupation rather than any individual response.

Crested Pigeon

LOW

Whistling Wing Flush

Ground • Feeding • Quiet

That makes it a bimodal system: quiet ground feeding and an automatic broadcast generated the instant the bird leaves.

Crested Porcupine

LOW

Hollow Quills Rattled as a Warning

Ambling • Nocturnal • Rooting

That makes it a bimodal system: quiet nocturnal foraging and a loud staged deterrent.

Crested Serpent Eagle

LOW

Legs Armoured Against the Bite

Perched • Shaded • Scanning

That makes it a bimodal system: a patient shaded watch and a brief armoured strike.

Crimson Sunbird

HIGH

Feeding Perched, Not Hovering

Landing on a stem beside a flower rather than hovering in front of it • Inserting a decurved bill and tubular tongue into the corolla • Drawing nectar up capillary grooves while the body is supported

Since visits recur constantly, it operates as a high-frequency system.

Crimson-fronted Barbet

LOW

Cutting Cavities Others Move Into

A stout bill used to excavate a nest hole in soft dead or decaying wood, which most cavity nesters cannot do • A new hole cut most years rather than an old one reused, so the number of cavities in a wood accumulates • Those abandoned holes taken over by parakeets, mynas, owlets, bats and bees, none of which can make one

Because the cycle is annual, it operates as a low-frequency system.

Crocodile Icefish

LOW

Antifreeze Flow Circulation

Cold • Transparent • Steady-flow

This makes them a strongly low-frequency system: built for continuous, economical flow in stable cold rather than fast, wasteful spikes of activity.

Crocodile Monitor

MID

Tail-Counterweighted Canopy Climb

Climbing • Searching • Arboreal

Because the system converts continuous searching effort into a steady return, it is a mid-frequency system.

Crown-of-thorns Starfish

LOW

Coral-Matting Spine Engine

Sheltered • Slow • Reserve-led

This creates a bimodal rhythm: low-frequency sheltering and digestion anchored in the reef, and medium-frequency, sustained feeding movements that steadily reshape the habitat when their hunger is applied.

Crowned Eagle

LOW

Two-Year Single-Chick Investment

One chick • Fed for a year • Biennial

Because the whole reproductive system runs on a two-year cycle, it is a low-frequency system.

Crystal Red Shrimp

MID

A Colour Form Bred Into Place

Grazing biofilm and algae from surfaces continuously • Carrying a fixed red and white pattern produced by selective breeding • Depending on soft acidic water held within a narrow range

Since grazing is continuous, it operates as a mid-frequency system.