Frequency signatures: European Lobster to False Killer Whale

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 769–792.

European Lobster

LOW

Two Claws Doing Opposite Jobs

Holding prey with a slender toothed cutter • Breaking shells with a heavy blunt crusher • Losing and regrowing either across successive moults

Since moults are a year or more apart, it operates as a low-frequency system.

European Mole Cricket

LOW

A Burrow Shaped Into a Horn

Tunnelling • Root-feeding • Subterranean

That makes it a bimodal system: slow subterranean tunnelling and a sustained evening calling phase.

European Nightjar

LOW

Cryptic Ground Perch Hunter

Camouflaged • Dayground • Still

Because survival depends on this alternation between cryptic day stillness and rhythmic night hunting from cover, the nightjar is best understood as a bimodal system with a low-frequency hiding mode and a mid-frequency foraging mode.

European Perch

MID

Bars That Break the Outline

Holding station among reed stems and submerged branches • Carrying dark vertical bars that match the vegetation • Darting out when a small fish passes and returning to cover

Since dashes recur through the day, it operates as a mid-frequency system.

European Plaice

LOW

Asymmetric Sandhugger Body

Flat • Hidden • Patient

This architecture makes the plaice a low-frequency system: energy is spent slowly, movement is modest and close to the bottom, and the core strategy is continuous, patient camouflage rather than repeated high bursts or large-scale shifts.

European Pond Terrapin

LOW

Aquatic Bury-and-Pause Refuge

Sheltered • Withdrawn • Slow-recovering

Because the main response to overwhelm is to withdraw, reduce output and stretch limited resources over time, its operating rhythm is a single low-frequency mode built around retreat and patient recharge.

European Rabbit

MID

Deferred Burrow Digestion

Out on the sward • Cropping fast • Ears turning

Because a brief exposed intake phase is paired with a long protected processing phase, this is a bimodal system.

European Rhinoceros Beetle

LOW

Rotten-Wood Larval Decomposition

Curled in decaying heartwood • Fermenting what it chews • Years before it surfaces

Since the years that matter run at the pace of microbial digestion, it operates as a low-frequency system.

European Robin

MID

Perpetual Song Advertisement

Advertising • Constant • Bordered

That makes the robin a mid-frequency system, rhythmic and continuous, where the output is advertisement rather than force.

European Roller

MID

Two Signals, Sky and Nest

Perching • Rolling • Dropping on prey

Hunting is a steady perch-and-drop cycle over large ground insects, and that continuous working rhythm makes it a mid-frequency system.

European Serin

MID

twisted fibre nest cup

Local • Twisted • Cupping

When local fibres are wrong—too stiff, too sparse, too wet—the weave fails because the system assumes proximate materials can be worked into a holding geometry through steady mid effort.

European Spider Crab

MID

Moulting Together in a Heap

Walking the seabed alone through most of the year • Feeding on molluscs, echinoderms and algae • Carrying a spined carapace that is hard and adequate

Applying the structural test, a soft aggregated animal and a hard solitary one are two states, making this a bimodal system.

European Spiny Lobster

LOW

The Same Crevice for Years

Occupying a particular cave or crevice on rocky ground • Foraging out and returning to the same shelter • Holding that site for years and remaining findable in it

Since the cycle runs across years, it operates as a low-frequency system.

European Starling

MID

Muscles That Open the Bill

Driving the closed bill into turf • Forcing it open against the soil • Looking down into the gap with forward-rotated eyes

Since probes repeat continuously, it operates as a mid-frequency system.

European Stick Insect

LOW

Branch-mimic Stillframe Body

Camouflaged • Motionless • Enduring

Because its core survival pattern is extended, low-output stillness that blends into a stable background, this is a low-frequency system anchored in branch-like, enduring quiet.

European Stonechat

MID

Staying Put and Starting Early

Holding a territory through the winter rather than migrating • Beginning to breed weeks before migrants arrive • Fitting in two or three broods before the season closes

Since hunting drops recur constantly, it operates as a mid-frequency system.

European Storm Petrel

MID

Wave-Skimming Flutter Gear

Rhythmic • Hovering • Skims

Because their whole system is built around ongoing, rhythmic interaction with the stormy surface—neither slow hoarding nor explosive bursts—the European Storm Petrel is a mid-frequency, steady-operations animal.

European Sturgeon

LOW

Everything Left in One Catchment

A species that once spawned in rivers from the Baltic to the Black Sea • A single naturally reproducing population remaining in the Gironde and Garonne • Every reintroduction elsewhere drawn from stock originating in that one catchment

Because the timescale runs across decades, it operates as a low-frequency system.

European Wildcat

LOW

A Species Dissolving Into Another

A wild population overlapping everywhere with free-ranging domestic and feral cats • Hybridisation producing fertile offspring that backcross freely in both directions • Wild genomes progressively diluted, so animals that look and behave like wildcats increasingly carry domestic ancestry

Because the dilution runs across generations, it operates as a low-frequency system.

Evergreen Bagworm Moth

LOW

Leaf-Cased Slow Forager

Hidden • Incremental • Attached

This architecture makes the system slow, conservative and reuse-focused: energy goes into one shelter that doubles as armor and camouflage, and action is timed to moments when food and cover overlap, which produces a distinctly low-frequency, case-worn patience strategy.