Mexican Burrowing Toads as gravitational wave detectors

Abstract

It is generally assumed that gravitational waves are extremely difficult to detect. However, we show that the call of the Mexican Burrowing Toad has an amazing resemblance to cosmic gravitational wave signals due to the merging of neutron stars and/or black holes. It is known that toads exhibit magnetoreception - the ability to detect magnetic fields - and that magnetic fields thus subtly affect ion channel activities in toad neurons. We speculate that gravitational strains produce phonons and magnons in a ferromagnetic substance embedded in the nervous system of the toads and that these coherent signals are exponentially amplified by a Raman laser mechanism to the point where they can be detected. The fine tuning necessary for this mechanism to work would help to explain why this species of toad show this remarkable ability and others do not. We analyze the sound of a pond full of Mexican Burrowing Toads in the hopes of detecting slight phase shifts in their calls due to a gravitational wave event. No effect was found and the the LIGO/VIRGO consortia have not reported an event during the recording, illustrating the power of this approach. We suggest the massive use of these toads would be an inexpensive way to support the operation of optical interferometric gravitational wave detector facilities.

Figures (5)

• Figure 1: Time-resolved spectrogram of the strain amplitude for the GW event GW150914 Abbott2016. The chirp frequency goes from approximately 100 to 400 Hz within about 100 ms.
• Figure 2: Image of a Mexican Burrowing Toad ( Rhinophrynus dorsalis), courtesy of toad.
• Figure 3: Sonogramme of multiple calls by a single Mexican Burrowing Toad. Note the rapid rise in frequency displayed by all of the harmonics. A final slight drop in frequency is also visible. In the background, calls by other toads can be seen, some at slightly different frequencies. The oscillating band at higher frequencies is due to crickets.
• Figure 4: Cepstrogramme of the Mexican Burrowing Toad calls shown in Fig.\ref{['fig:sonogram']}. Note how a single signal with a rapid rise in frequency from about 190 to 325 Hz within about 1250 msec is seen. Compare this form with that of the gravitational event shown in Fig. \ref{['fig:GW150914']}.
• Figure 5: Time-resolved sonogramme from a recording of a pond full of Mexican Burrowing Toads.