There is a somewhat odd finding that highly toxic Pumpkin toadlets from Brazil apparently cannot hear their own mating calls (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/21/scientists-discover-unique-brazilian-frogs-that-are-deaf-to-their-own-mating-calls). It is generally argued that actions, with costs, such as this auditory display would disappear from the animal's repertoire very quickly if they served no real purpose. It takes energy to call and the calls could attract predators (unlikely in this case as the animals seem to have no predators due to their toxicity) and/or parasites. It is argued that they might have only recently lost the ability to detect and respond to these sounds but this is an untestable hypothesis (and is not very convincing). Perhaps the persistent sound generation serves some other function such as visually confirming the vigour of the male?
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