The Sound Is Used by Humans and Animals for Communication - Essay Example

Animal Sounds Animal Sounds Introduction Vibrating objects produce sound by sending out energy waves that are altered by the solid, liquid or gaseous medium they go through. Such sound waves can be described by either their volume or pitch which, respectively, define how high or low the sound is and the intensity. Basically, sound is used by humans and animals for communication and can either be natural or unnatural. However, although one of the most widely used function of sound is entertainment, there are various other reasons people are interested in the sound of animals apart from pure aesthetics. There are also arguments by Rothenberg (2013) that opine humans got their notion of dance, rhythm and synchronisation from insect sounds that have surrounded them through millions of years of evolution. Essentially, animal and insect sounds have shaped human sounds. He claims that the sound of insects has acted as a soundtrack for humanity in its entire history and presently, the sounds insects and animals produce are inextricably linked with humanity. From this perspective, this paper will research on the relationship and answer the question “are there any reasons, beyond the purely aesthetic, for us to be interested in the sounds of animals?” Overview Sound can either be audible or inaudible to the human ear. Inaudible sound is further categorised as infrasound (those below 20 hertz) and ultrasounds (those above 20 kilohertz). The human inner ear has a spiral sheet on which sound plucks synonymously to the way guitar strings are plucked and fires the brain cells that constitute the hearing parts of the brain. When the firing pattern is varied, different cell ensembles are excited and the sounds associated to past experiences, thoughts and feelings. Animal sound is natural in the sense that they are generated by the animals in their normal soundscape (Seyfarth, Cheney & Fischer, 2010). Apart from humankind having the unique ability to understand or identify with the needs most animals, listening to their sounds is one of the key ways of understanding such needs (Rothenberg, 2013). This can also be viewed from the perspective that humans know relatively little on other creatures’ sensory world but, apart from visually, they can interact with them by listening to the sounds they make. Most of the sounds and the vocalizations animals produce are specialised for communication with other animals belonging to the same species. In mammals, sound is produced in the vocal chords (larynx) while birds use a special organ known as the syrinx to produce their songs. Although frogs have a larynx that has vocal chords, they differ from those of mammals (Litvin, Blanchard & Blanchard, 2007). Crickets produce sound by scraping one wing’s series of bumps against the other’s thickened ridges. Discussion Through this research, it is believed and shown that humans actually have other reasons to be interested in animal sounds. An analysis of animal sounds provides people with the opportunity to conveniently and precisely study the structure of animal behaviour and a comparison can assist in studies of human behaviour with regards to sound and voices (Seyfarth, Cheney & Fischer, 2010). Animal sounds can largely be categorised into territory sounds, warning sounds and courtship sounds and most birds, insects and animals will give certain sounds in certain situations. Patterns are discovered during studies in which scientists record what sound an animal made and under what circumstances. Recordings of the place, date and time are also made. As has been pointed out, humans can identify with animal needs and studying and analysing their sounds is one of the ways of understanding such needs. From the understanding that the sound produced by animals entail transmitting signals to other animals such that the recipients of the signals benefit, the behaviour of animals can be studied. Examples include the study of how animals use sound to attract others, especially mates, send warnings about the presence of predators, repel enemies or competitors, advertise species, communicate to others the availability of food and communicate about the environment (Seyfarth, Cheney & Fischer, 2010). Just like humans communicate through language by speaking, reading and writing, it is equally important to establish not only whether animals communicate but also how they communicate. Animals do not speak but use a variety of ways to communicate and sound is among them (Litvin, Blanchard & Blanchard, 2007). However, it is worth noting that a few animals such as orangutans, gorillas and chimpanzees have a form of language. An interest in animal sound can help humans recognise and understand the meaning of various sounds they make in different situations or environments. This is after understanding that the structure and rate of producing sound varies according to the message the animal intends to convey (Friend, 2008). When people understand the behaviour of animals in relation to their sound, they can use it to their advantage such as luring hunted game or detracting pest and predators. Vocalisation is the ability, especially of birds, to speak and is commonly termed as songs or calls (McGregor, 2005). From this perspective, an interest in animal sound will provide knowledge on how animals use territorial sounds to mark their territories and also how they use courtship sounds to attract mating partners. Further, knowledge in sound animals can lead to better understanding of mating patterns of some species. For example, we can see the significance of interest in animal sounds from the way it helped understand how animals like frogs not only mark their territories but also give calls to let potential mates know of their presence (McGregor, 2005). Through studying animal sounds, people understand how animals like seals, whales and chimpanzees heavily rely on vocalizations to communicate. In such studies, it can be understood how songs or calls are used for the recognition and locating other animals within a social group. An example is the way whales usually swim beyond their groups’ visual contact but track each other by the noises they make. An interest in animal sounds can help develop studies such as bioacoustics. Basically a cross-disciplinary science in which acoustics and biology are combined, bioacoustics will be concerned with investigating how animals produce, disperse and receive sound (Litvin, Blanchard & Blanchard, 2007). First, it must be noted that the investigations usually entail anatomical and neuro-physiological basis of how sound is produced and detected and how the acoustic signals relate to the medium that they are dispersed through. Then, the interest is that the results will provide clues not only as to how acoustic mechanisms evolved but also how animals evolved to employ them mating (Ballentine, Searcy & Nowicki, 2008). Therefore, the study of animal sounds in such non-invasive ways can help in understanding how animals relate to their acoustic environments. Animal sound observers recognise species of animals by their sound and can locate them or even tell the current condition of nature or predict what it is about to change to. Therefore, sound knowledge in animal sound also acts as a tool for investigating and predicting environmental and climatic conditions. In terms of evolving, interest in animal sounds provides information on how they adapt their anatomy (Searcy & Nowicki, 2005). For example, moths originally developed ears so that they could detect sounds produced by bats, which are their worst predators, and avoid them. However, their ears as well as sound were adapted over time for sexual communication. This study, which began from studying sound, led to further revelations of the behaviourism of moths. For example, the males produce bat-like sounds that fool the females and cause them to freeze, facilitating mating (Ballentine, Searcy & Nowicki, 2008). The interest in animal sounds can reveal that natural-history documentaries portray the natural world wrongly as silent and that vision dominates as the most significant sense and that is evident from the way such documentaries have artificial soundtracks (Litvin, Blanchard & Blanchard, 2007). It is from the interest in and study of animal sounds that it has been established that although birds like sparrows may appear friendly to each other as they share songs, they are actually insulting each other. Studies show that the sharing of songs by sparrows is an aggressive behaviour of seeking attention and is more common among confrontational older males. When invaded, sparrows defend their territories by matching the songs of the invading birds (Ballentine, Searcy & Nowicki, 2008). Such studies have helped people understand that the more animals feel threatened or in situations where they need other members of their own species to survive the sounds they use to communicate get more complicated. Further, animal sounds interest humans because of some unique similarities they have to their own, not necessarily in language but perceived meaning. For instance, just like humans have different languages or vernaculars depending on numerous factors, different species of animals communicate using their own unique characteristics but there are possibilities for understanding some sounds from other species (McGregor, 2005). For example, when the chickadee produces an alarm sound, it is understood by other creatures in the forest and they immediately become silent. On the other hand, when it makes one of its other non-alarm calls, the creatures are not able to understand the meaning and do not react (Ballentine, Searcy & Nowicki, 2008). Therefore, by studying animal sounds and how animals respond to them, humans can understand how they (the humans) have evolved and why they respond to some sounds in the way they do apart from simply learning animal behaviour (Searcy & Nowicki, 2005). According to the study by Searcy and Nowicki (2005), the manner in which sounds have evolved to manipulate the behaviour of the animals that hear them can be associated to the way humans also respond to some sounds. Animals produce the sounds that they do because they have been shown to directly affect the nervous systems of the recipients of the sounds in a way they cannot resist. The study of animal sounds typically enables people to understand that when sound signals evolve over time, the way they are responded to will also evolve naturally, and that can explain the association of man with noise. For example, when people receive certain sounds that bear no useful information they will evolve to start ignoring that sound, just in the same way the creatures in the forests understand the chickadee’s alarm call (McGregor, 2005). However, this also implies that receivers of sound only need to evolve their responses when it is advantageous or beneficial to do so. This is from the understanding that when a sound is ignored or elicits no response, it ceases to be beneficial to the animal that produces it and the entire communication system should therefore disappear. Ideally, if the receivers of sound do not benefit by responding in a particular way, then receivers that attend to other cues will be favoured by natural selection. Seyfarth, Cheney and Fischer (2010) used the example of male frogs competing by using low frequency vocal displays to induce nervous-system responses that caused receivers to retreat to explain this notion. Unless the frog receiving the sound benefits from the way it responds, natural selection will not maintain the response. It can only be maintained if the low frequency sound predicts accurately the competitive ability of the caller and providing the necessary information about their potential victory in a confrontation. More interest and understanding animal sounds can also provide insight into their mating patterns and behaviour. For example, the South Pacific male humpback has a characteristic mating song that, over just one mating season, spreads to the east from the west and the phenomenon is attributable to their behaviourism. According to McGregor (2005), several humpbacks either move to new groups with their songs for the purpose of starting them in that population or neighbouring groups hear and pick up new songs. This is important because it is not only aesthetic but greatly promotes the continued existence of the species because it is essentially during the mating period. This discussion shows that animal sounds, just like humans, have certain fixed uses and meanings. For example, male hooded warblers produce “chipps” in their nesting stage when there is high territorial competition among them (Ballentine, Searcy & Nowicki, 2008). To indicate the entry of a female, additional specific songs are mixed in the singing. However, when intruders approach the nesting young, both male and female warblers make high-pitched “chinks”. When faced with danger or under distress, distinctly different calls than the adults and it always results in the flock departing. This is mainly interesting to humans because through such studies, they were able to make recording of such sounds and played them back to detract starlings in areas where they are a nuisance. Another example that should interest humans is that of blackbirds and how they produce distinct “chuck” sounds from threatened by a predator from the ground and “seeee” sounds when threatened from above (Ballentine, Searcy & Nowicki, 2008). From this, humans can further study how their own symbolic use of different sounds or voices relates to that of the birds in their use in specific contexts. Similarly, marine animals produce distinct sounds that draw distinct responses such as killer whales emitting noises that cause the fleeing of gray whales. Just as the marine animals emit different sounds in certain contexts, those hearing them also decode them and respond accordingly. For example, in some local residential areas, the sound of roosters is common. However, while it thrills some people to listen to such loud animal calls, they are rarely naturally restorative because they overload the human auditory system preventing them from hearing other warning sounds (Litvin, Blanchard & Blanchard, 2007). This has the potential of triggering other early warning systems that places them on alert. Therefore, apart from aesthetics, familiarity with certain animal sounds plays crucial role in how people respond to certain sounds. The most significant relation of this concept is that humans also decode and respond to certain sounds differently. For instance, while some people may get positively excited by the loud noise of crickets, critics have shown that the noise can actually be harmful to health and not simply annoying. For example, people in Australia have reported inability to sleep or even concentrate on reading due to the noise made by certain species of birds native to the region (Litvin, Blanchard & Blanchard, 2007). Therefore, understanding the effects of some animal sounds can help develop defensive measures against them. Apart from the loud noises, many species of animals produce infrasound that impact negatively on humans. According to Litvin, Blanchard and Blanchard (2007), infrasound raises anxiety in some people. However, when people investigate other sources of infrasound, it can be appreciated that that produced by animals is relatively inconsequential. Essentially, people will learn to appreciate that unlike mechanical infrasound is more harmful that that produced by animals basically for survival (Litvin, Blanchard & Blanchard, 2007). For example, it is a basic long distance communication tool used by elephants. From a different perspective, animal sounds can also serve a functional role in the development of language and especially among children. According to Friend (2008), the fact that language development in children takes off properly when they begin associating animals to the sounds they make may seen quite simplistic but is actually quite profound. First, learning animal sounds is an exercise children will enjoy and once they start saying the sounds there is a notable and considerable expansion in their vocabulary. Friend (2008) also explains how learning animal sounds could act as a forerunner to reading and cognitive development by pointing out that children will learn how to associate the picture of, say, a cat (the symbol) to its “meow” (the sound it produces). Therefore, this point shows that mimicking animal sounds is actually one of the earliest skills humans use to shape their own sound skills. Essentially, that is what the learning process will entail when they are taught to associate sounds and letters (symbols) at the age of five (Peterson, 2013). In terms of cognitive development, the fact that most of the animal sounds taught to children are in common words spoken every day. According to Peterson (2013), paediatric speech-language therapists generally agree that animal sounds appeal to children and they are also easy for them to make. When this aspect is combined by the fact that animals usually fascinate children, it becomes easy helps children learn to produce their first sounds and consequently, words. Therefore, when a child is asked to produce the sound of, say, a cow, they will first listen to the question and then comprehend that they are being asked a question before actually responding with correct sound of the animal. That procedure alone involves a considerable amount of processing which not only has an impact on cognitive development but also their communicating skills. However, this is not to dispute that there are ongoing debates on animal sound-words, which have largely been shown by Seyfarth, Cheney and Fischer (2010) to simply describe their relationship to the noises. For example, children are taught that cats “say” meow at the same point in life when they are taught milk is white and both teachings have the same intention of teaching language and conveying information on facts of the world. However, “meow” is different information from “white” and, therefore, does not even teach children about culture but, rather, culture (Peterson, 2013). According to Peterson (2013), this shows that if animal sound-words are actually specific culturally, there may be a relationship to human words and culture. Just like the English language lacks a single word for some short phrases, other like Somali and Arabic will have such single words for short phrases. In English, friendly woodland creatures and farm animals are given sounds as can be seen in the way they were first introduced in children’s literature. Another significant area of interest in animal sound is its potential to avoid human-animal conflict and specifically marine animals. Human activities such as geophysical exploration, transportation, oceanographic research, defense and construction in the modern world are contributing noise to the environment (Litvin, Blanchard & Blanchard, 2007). With specific concern with marine mammals that rely more on sound to move around, avoid predators and find food, such activities amount to harassment. By understanding how sounds produced underwater enable marine mammals to not only gather information but also communicate from all directions and great distances, people can minimise the interferences human activities cause. Scientific studies have shown that sound travels five times faster underwater, which means that any other sounds produced by human activities reaches the marine mammals faster than they reach terrestrial animals (Litvin, Blanchard & Blanchard, 2007). Therefore, by understanding how marine animals identify shapes and sizes of other animals and objects will provide information on how conflict between humans and such animals can be reduced. Proof that human activities are interfering with marine life was given by Cox (2014) when he described how difficult it was to monitor the activities of dolphins in industrialised waters that had considerable traffic of sea vessels. In calm waters, the dolphins will be able to move about easily and find prey easily, but the interference of the sea vessels and the noises they produce are a source of distress to marine life. Therefore, the significance of this point confirms that human activities actually do harass marine animals by producing unnecessary noise that distracts the animals from the noises that are critical to their survival. Essentially, humans need better understanding of how marine sounds affect marine life and design approaches to minimise such impacts. Apart from the aesthetics created by animal sounds, they link humans not only to nature but also the eternal since the sounds existed even before humanity (Rothenberg, 2013). At the centre of the human relationship with the natural world are anima songs and calls (Cox, 2014). For example, the sounds of certain animals, birds and insects are suggestive of certain seasons, places and times. Further, it is also the sound of insects that developed the human interest in noise. For instance, the modern world is operated by machines that rule the day with noise and people will either accept the noise readily or go to extremes to avoid it. This can be seen from the way most people, for example, will choose drum machines due to their exact tones rather than real drummers’ flexibility, and most also prefer amplified guitars (Rothenberg, 2013). Therefore, as people get more attracted to artificial sounds, they also get more intrigued in animal sounds and especially insects that produced similar sounds much earlier before humans. In his work, Rothenberg (2013) also points out an interesting aspect of the crickets. He says that the songs with the lowest pitch generally come from the biggest and strongest crickets, which also implies that the songs with the highest pitch could come from the smallest and (possibly) weakest cricket. This can be linked to an observable feature among the human community where men are generally bigger and stronger than women and almost always have lower-pitched voices. It is through the interest in animal sounds that certain characteristics and behaviors were observed in insects. For example, the only way a bat attracts a mate is by the use of sound. The average flying speed of a bat is about 10 metres per second. Therefore, the male uses a different song to attract a female within the tenth of a second that it flies past but immediately changes to another song once the female gets into its roost. Through their interest in animal sounds, researchers studied the relation between the sound and behaviour of giant turtles in South America. Although the meaning of their distinctive sounds has not yet been established, it was shown that the use of sound among them is basically to stay socially together and breed their offspring. The studies also show that the turtles produce high-pitched sounds when nesting and low-pitched ones when moving in the river or basking. Another scientific area that can benefit from the unaesthetic interest in animal sound is the study of animal consciousness. According to Seyfarth, Cheney and Fischer (2010), a number of scientists agree that by listening passively to the voluntary speech of animals, there is a possibility of learning the thoughts of other animals and determine whether they are conscious or not. Therefore, the interest in animal sound can be shown to be beneficial to other disciplines. Conclusion It has been shown that sound is produced as energy waves by the vibration of objects and is altered by the solid, liquid or gaseous medium they go through. The resultant sound waves are described either by their volume or pitch which. Volume defines how high or low the sound is which pitch defines the intensity. Sound can either be natural or unnatural and it is used by humans and animals for the primary role of communication. Apart from communication, however, sound has also been shown to be used for aesthetic purposes but this paper has given other reasons to be interested in the sound of animals. Humankind has the unique ability to understand the needs of animals and listening to the sounds they make under different circumstances is one way of identifying with the needs. Therefore, by studying the sound of animals, people are able to understand their behaviourism as well compare it to their own. It has also been shown that teaching animal sounds could act as a precursor to language and cognitive development. It has also been shown that a comprehensive understanding of how animals produce, disseminate and use sound for survival will help humans strategize on how to reduce activities that interfere with their natural habitats and reduce conflict. Bioacoustics has been shown to involve investigations of how sound is produced and detected and how the acoustic signals relate to the medium that they are dispersed through. This provides clues to how acoustic mechanisms evolved and also how animals evolved to make use of them. An interesting finding is that there are claims of animal infrasound being harmful to humans, but that has been shown to be relatively insignificant. References Ballentine, B, Searcy, W & Nowicki, S. (2008) ‘Reliable aggressive signaling in swamp sparrows’, Animal Behaviour, vol. 75, no.4, pp. 693-703. Cox, T, (2014) Sonic wonderland: a scientific odyssey of sound. London: Bodley Head. Friend, T. (2008) Animal talk: breaking the codes of animal language. New York: Free Press. Karpf, A. (2006) The human voice: the story of a remarkable talent. London: Bloomsbury. Litvin, Y, Blanchard, C & Blanchard, R. (2007) ‘Rat 22 kHz ultrasonic vocalizations as alarm cries’, Behavioural Brain Research, vol. 182, no. 2, pp. 166-172. McGregor, P. (2005) Animal communication networks. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Peterson, B. (2013) Why we teach babies animal sounds: does the cat really say ‘meow’—or are we just teaching kids to be American? New York: Cengage. Rothenberg, D. (2013) Bug music: how insects gave us rhythm and noise. London: St. Martin’s Press. Searcy, W. & Nowicki, S. (2005) The evolution of animal communication. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Seyfarth, R, Cheney, D & Fischer, J (2010) ‘The central importance of information in studies of animal communication’, Animal Behaviour, vol. 80, pp. 3-8. Read More