And a 2004 study similarly observed that hyraxes raised on cooked foods experienced roughly 10% less growth in facial areas involved in chewing compared to those given raw and dried foods.
The Phoenicians were no more successful, although they bequeathed a memorable nickname to posterity: I-shepan-ha, “land of hyraxes” (more familiar as Hispania).
" We've tried to understand the meaning of all this-why a hyrax would waste time and energy and expose himself to predators by singing such a loud song."
A study on small rodents called hyraxes for example found that animals raised on softer cooked food instead of raw or dried food had less growth in the bones of their jaws and lower faces.
One of the first perissodactyls we know of was Hyracotherium, a small ungulate whose fossils were first discovered in England and named, for some reason, for its supposed resemblance to the rock hyrax.
Weissman thinks that the snort crescendo, together with the increasing harshness, make the songs impossible to ignore and grabs the attention of other hyraxes—which makes sense.
Rodents, horses, whales, and even hyraxes have been shown to exhibit important health outcomes that correlate with their social environment and relationships.
He believes that understanding why hyraxes sing, and how they construct their songs, could reveal something about the evolutionary origins of human speech and human music—which is no snorting matter.
They found that the hyraxes sampled from between the Volta River in eastern Ghana and the Niger River in western Nigeria had differently shaped snouts and inner nostrils from the species of hyraxes to their east and west.