Wildlink explains what animals are actually saying — one sound at a time, with the audio attached so you can hear it rather than read a description of it.
Most people arrive here for one of two reasons: something made a noise outside and they want to know what it was, or they are simply curious about how animals communicate. Both are good reasons, and both are badly served by the internet as it stands. Search almost any animal sound and you will find pages written with total confidence and no sources, repeating claims that trace back to nothing.
This site exists to do it properly.
How we research
Every article follows the same rules.
- Primary sources first. We cite peer-reviewed research and government or agency wildlife resources. When a widely repeated claim traces back through a chain of blogs to one original study, we cite the study.
- Inference is labelled as inference. A great deal of what is said about animal sounds is extrapolated from better-studied species. Where we are doing that, we say so in the article, in the relevant section, rather than burying it.
- Folk names are not scientific categories. Several sounds people search for — the coyote “scream,” the bobcat “caterwaul” — are listener labels rather than categories in the literature. We use the popular name, because that is what you searched for, and then explain what it actually corresponds to.
- We correct myths rather than repeat them. Coyotes howling does not mean they have made a kill. Purring is not determined by the hyoid bone. Mountain lions scream far less often than films suggest. Each of these appears on hundreds of pages and none of them holds up.
- Sometimes the answer is “it wasn’t that animal.” If the honest response to what you heard is that it was probably a red fox, we say that, even on a page about something else.
Why the audio matters
You cannot read a sound. Written descriptions of animal calls — “a wavering rising note,” “harsh and staccato” — are close to useless on their own, which is why most pages on this subject fail at the one thing the reader wants.
So every article here is built around a video, and every sound has a button that jumps straight to it. You can hear the call, read what it means, and hear the next one without ever losing your place.
Who writes this
Wildlink is written and produced by a small, dedicated team. Each of its members has a lifelong history with animals, both wild and domestic. In our world, horses, dogs, farm animals and the wilder beasts that lurk beyond the fence lines are never far away.
To be straightforward about it: this is not a research institution and we are not field biologists. What we do is read the actual literature carefully, cite it so you can check it yourself, and refuse to state things more confidently than the evidence allows. Every article ends with its sources for exactly that reason — you should not have to take our word for anything.
Corrections
If we have got something wrong, we want to know. Research moves, and some long-standing explanations have been overturned within the last few years. Send it to our contact page with a source if you have one, and we will fix it.
The videos
Every article is paired with a video on the Wildlink YouTube channel. Source footage used in the videos is credited in full in each video’s description.