sound
Gorillas can speak, so what is the difference between apes and humans ?
Listening to the language of apes
The similarities between apes and people have long fascinated scientists. Yet, writes Mary Colwell, the differences can be just as thrilling.
“When you look into the eyes of an ape you see an intelligent, self-aware animal looking back at you and appraising you,” says primatologist Charlotte Uhlenbroek, who has spent years observing apes in their natural environment. “I often wonder, what do they make of us when they look at us?”
Apes and humans are so similar it is impossible not to wonder what exactly separates us from our closest relatives on earth. “There is no other creature that so charms and fascinates the beholder as do these little effigies of the human race,” wrote R L Garner in 1896. In fact Garner was one of the first people to actively try to discern the differences by living with chimpanzees in West Africa. He noted their physical similarity, but also their social bonding, range of emotions and care of their young.
But it was their language he was most intrigued by. They seemed to talk to each other, but what were they saying and why? “The sounds uttered by these apes have all the characteristics of true speech,” wrote Garner. “The speaker is conscious of the meaning of the sound used, and uses it with the definite purpose of conveying an idea to the one addressed; the sound is always addressed to some definite one, and the speaker usually looks at the one addressed; he regulates the pitch and volume of the voice to suit the condition under which it is used; he knows the value of sound as a medium of thought. These and many other facts show that they are truly speech.” The language of the apes has fascinated us for centuries.
Find out more
Listen to Natural Histories: Monkeys and Apes on BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday 2 June at 11:00 BST
On 1 June 1698 the foremost anatomist of the day, Edward Tyson, came before the Royal Society to present his findings on the dissection of a pygmy chimpanzee. This young animal had arrived in England from Angola and had survived for two months before succumbing to an infection caused when it damaged its jaw in a fall on board the ship. His account of his work was published in his book, Orang-Outang, sive Homo Sylvestris: or, the Anatomy of a Pygmie, compared with that of a Monkey, an Ape, and a Man: with an Essay concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients. Among all the measurements and descriptions of muscle and bone is a touching story of how the animal was treated by the ship’s crew. It was dressed in clothes, fed the same food at table and would even “lie in a bed”. This was clearly an animal that intrigued the sailors. They, like us, looked at our closest relatives and saw reflected back the essence of their own humanness.
Koko’s kitten
One finding was of particular interest – the vocal chords. Tyson could see very little difference between the chimp’s throat and ours. “‘Tis exactly as it is in man,” he wrote. So why didn’t it speak? One theory was that if chimps allowed us to hear them talk we would enslave them, so they remained silent in the presence of humans. At a time when slavery was rife, the chimps were afraid that as our closest relative they would also be taken and subdued.
Over a century after Tyson’s pygmy chimp a mandrill was brought to Bristol on a slave ship and was taught to drink gin and smoke a pipe. “Happy Jerry” sat outside the Exeter Exchange in the Strand in London and was hugely popular – he was even invited to tea with the king. If we laugh today at the idea of Tyson’s pygmy chimp being dressed in clothes and Jerry smoking his long-stemmed pipe it is worth remembering the adverts for PG Tips tea in the 1970s, when chimps had tea parties and dressed as boys and girls.
Our view of apes has evolved and transformed over time and has been bound up with philosophy and religion as well as science.
In the 17th Century the veil between science, myth and religion was thin. An animal was not merely a creature to be described but an entity that embodied our view of the world and our place in in it. For Tyson, the reason the chimp didn’t speak was because it was not a reasoning being. Erica Fudge from the School of Humanities in Strathclyde University says, “Humans were different to animals because we have a thing called reason, which of course you can never find in the body, it is a spiritual essence, and so the fact that the chimpanzee has vocal chords that should allow it to speak and doesn’t speak, reinforces the status of humans as the reasoning creature.”
The notion that we are different from other life on earth because of some spiritual essence would not be an acceptable conclusion to scientists today, but we are still on the same quest – to discover just how close we are to apes. And it is to language that we turn for many of those answers. R L Garner was the first to try to teach a chimpanzee to speak, but his success was limited. Subsequent research revealed that bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-utans are capable of communicating through language, but not in the same way.
Seventy years ago attempts were made to train apes to speak English by taking newborn chimps into a household with a newborn baby and raising them together. By the time they were three the chimp far out performed the child in physical ability but could only pronounce a few words very badly. The human youngster at this age had already mastered several hundred words. It was then realised that in reality a chimp’s mouth and throat cannot make sounds in the same way as ours and in the wild they only vocalise when excited, non-verbal communication was far more important for day to day activities. This spawned a whole area of new research based on teaching sign language, specifically Ameslan, the American version of signing. This was a turning point in our understanding of apes. Chimpanzees quickly learn around 200 words and phrases, and more importantly start to put words together to create new concepts. For example a famous chimp called Washoe saw a swan on a pond and made her own name by combining water and bird together.
Over the following decades we have experimented with chimps in many and ingenious ways, the 1970s and 80s was the golden age of ape language research. As well as sign language chimps were taught to press buttons with pictures representing words to ask for food, to see a film or even to be tickled. But it was work with a pygmy chimp that purportedly showed how sophisticated this species’ language is. Kanzi seemed to have the ability to make simple sentences, to comment on what he was doing and even say what he intended to do in the future. It is worth noting though that the renowned primatologist Robert Sapolsky denies that these experiments showed anything other than the ability of apes to copy humans. The language experiments have at present all but ceased.
The past century has seen our relationship with apes transform from beasts of the jungle to creatures that are intelligent and communicative. Genetic studies show that we are 10 times more closely related to chimps than a mouse is related to a rat. The fact that Tyson’s pygmy ate with a fork but soiled his bed and that Jerry could suddenly revert to “bad behaviour” made us realise that apes can entertain and appal us at the same time. It is the differences that thrill us as well as the similarities. The language of apes remains a mystery yet to be solved but we never tire of exploring just how close we really are.
Park ranger Andre Bauma has been taking care of orphaned mountain gorillas at Virunga, Africa’s oldest national park, and he says he loves them as if they were his own children.
Music & Neurology: Notes & Neurons
Notes & Neurons: In Search of the Common Chorus
Is our response to music hard-wired or culturally determined? Is the reaction to rhythm and melody universal or influenced by environment? John Schaefer, scientist Daniel Levitin, and musical artist Bobby McFerrin engage in live performances and cross-cultural demonstrations to illustrate music’s noteworthy interaction with the brain and our emotions.
Notes and Neurons Jam Session
Bobby McFerrin and Daniel Levitin join musical guests Naren Budhkar, Parag Chordia, and Amber Docters van Leeuwen in an improvised jam session to commemorate the end of the program “Notes and Neurons: In Search of the Common Chorus.”
Science of Sound: in the womb, humans hear before seeing
Good Vibrations: The Science of Sound
We look around us—constantly. But how often do we listen around us? Sound is critically important to our bodies and brains, and to the wider natural world.
In the womb, we hear before we see.
Join John Schaefer, Jamshed Bharucha, Christopher Shera, the Danish sound artist Jacob Kirkegaard and multi-instrumentalists Polygraph Lounge for a fascinating journey through the nature of sound.
How we perceive it, how it acts upon us and how it profoundly affects our well-being—including a demonstration of sounds produced by sources as varied as the human inner ear and the creation of the universe itself.
Boiling water with sound !
Peter Davey – Sonic Resonance Boiler
Sax notes lead to off-beat boiler.
Let us imagine a revolutionary heater for water powered by electricity, which bits all possible records. For example, it makes water boil almost instantly and in the entire volume.
The inventor claimed that it apparently consumes much less electricity than the value of heat it generates. It is safe in use – means if properly installed one can touch it, as well as touch water it boils, without a danger of electrocuting, in turn when the entire boiled water evaporates, the heater becomes cold by itself and does not initiate any fire.
Furthermore, there are premises which suggest that this heater probably also telekinetises the boiled water thus turning it into almost miraculous “water of life”. In turn, as we know (e.g. from mythology and folklore), such miraculous “water of life” has capability to heal, increases the life longevity, improves taste, conserves food, etc. Thus, these people who drink such “water of life”, may gain from it not only good health and increased longevity, but also improved taste and greater usability of everything that is based on it. But the boiler described here bits also completely different record.
Namely, the world record of it is, that a phenomenon called the curse of inventors that secretly affect inventors and discoverers, effectively blocked the implementation of this invention to an industrial production for over 60 years. And this blocking is carried out in spite that the invention displays potentials to positively revolutionise principles of liquids heating, that probably it telekinetises water which it boils, and also that the technical capabilities and pioneering principles of operation allow this invention to lift significantly the civilisation level in the entire humanity.
Micheal Tellingenger on NZ Mans invention to Boil Water with Frequency
Peter Davey, 94 year old NZ musician – Michael Tellinger wants him found but I understand Peter died the same year the NZ Media aired his story, 2008. Peter Davey boils water with sound/frequency, this Tellinger says is the technology that will break us free from energy enslavement.
Free energy technologies are available. Set humanity free from it’s enslavement to fossil fuel technologies .
Peter Davey is now dead and his discovery lost. He boiled water with sound.
Sound Frequencies & Vibrations – Hearing Test & Illusions
How Old Are Your Ears? (Hearing Test)
*MUST WATCH IN 1080p AND USE HEADPHONES*
How high can you hear? Take this ‘test’ to see how old your ears are!
Can You Trust Your Ears? (Audio Illusions)
20Hz to 20kHz (Human Audio Spectrum)
Sinusoidal wave going trough entire human audio spectrum, starting at 20Hz and ending at 20kHz. Note that the frequency increases exponentially, the idea was to increase the frequency by constant fraction of currently played frequency rather than by a constant value (which would result in clearly noticeable fast change at lower frequencies and nearly no change at higher frequencies). Enjoy.
Note: This wave has the same volume level measured by acoustic pressure all the time, however human sound perception differs depending on frequency. For lower frequencies (below 1kHz) you might want to increase your volume, but don’t forget to lower it later to avoid damage to your hearing.
If you don’t hear anything below 40-50Hz even at full volume your audio hardware is probably incapable of playing lowest frequencies. You might want to try to listen on the headphones in such case. Also if you stop hearing sound somewhere between 10kHz – 20kHz – do not increase your volume for safety reasons. Every human hears a bit differently and have different hearing thresholds. Hearing range also changes with age. Younger people can usually hear higher frequencies.
Hearing Test in HD quality. Sinusoidal wave starting at 20 Hz frequency and going up to 20 kHz frequency.
It’s recommended that you listen to this using headphones. If you can’t hear anything above 16000 Hertz it’s probably because Youtube’s audio compression cut off frequencies above 16kHz. Try watching in HD to get better audio quality.
The Power of Sound & Vibration: Sound Wave Experiments !
Sound waves are all around us, and when harnessed, can do some super cool things. Trace looks at a few ways we’re using the power of sound waves to our advantage.
“People have been able to levitate small objects using sound for years. But applications for the technique are severely limited because scientists hadn’t figured out how to control and manipulate the floating objects. Until now.”
Resonance Experiments with tones & vibration !
Amazing Resonance Experiment!
So this experiment is the Chladni plate experiment. I used a tone generator, a wave driver (speaker) and a metal plate attached to the speaker. First add sand to the plate then begin playing a tone. Certain frequencies vibrate the metal plate in such a way that it creates areas where there is no vibration. The sand “falls” into those areas, creating beautiful geometric patterns. As the frequency increases in pitch the patterns become more complex.
Sound & Water Experiments ! Awesome !!!
Cool Sound and Water Experiment!
This is really simple but has such an awesome effect. Fill a bucket full of water and place it about 5 feet off the ground. Place a subwoofer about 1 foot lower than the bucket. Run a plastic tube from the top bucket down in front of the subwoofer. Tape the tube to the front of the speaker. Then aim the end of the tube to an empty bucket on the floor. Get the water flowing from the top bucket. Now just generate a 24 hz sine wave and set your camera to 24 fps and watch the magic happen. Basically your cameras frame rate is synced up with the rate of the vibrations of the water so it appears to be frozen or still. Now if you play a 23 hz sine wave your frame rate will be off just a little compared to the sine wave causing the water to “move backward” or so as it appears. You can play a 25 hz sine wave and cause the water to move slowly foward.
Really fun experiment. You should definitely give it a try.
Thanks to JacobTMcgarry for giving me the OK to create my own version based on his original video.
Amazing Water & Sound Experiment #2
Ever since I created the first version of this video a year ago I’ve been wanting to try it again with more water and better lighting / footage. This is a really fun project and when you first see the results, chances are your jaw will drop. The main thing to keep in mind for this project is that you need a camera that shoots 24 fps.
The effect that you are seeing can’t be seen with the naked eye. The effect only works through the camera. However, there is a version of the project you can do where the effect would be visible with the naked eye. For that project, you’d have to use a strobe light.
For this project you’ll need:
A powered speaker
Water source
Soft rubber hose
Tone generating software
24 fps camera
Tape.
Run the rubber hose down past the speaker so that the hose touches the speaker. Leave about 1 or 2 inches of the hose hanging past the bottom of the speaker. Secure the hose to the speaker with tape or whatever works best for you. The goal is to make sure the hose is touching the actual speaker so that when the speaker produces sound (vibrates) it will vibrate the hose.
Set up your camera and switch it to 24 fps. The higher the shutter speed the better the results. But also keep in the mind that the higher your shutter speed, the more light you need. Run an audio cable from your computer to the speaker. Set your tone generating software to 24hz and hit play. Turn on the water. Now look through the camera and watch the magic begin. If you want the water to look like it’s moving backward set the
frequency to 23hz. If you want to look like it’s moving forward in slow motion set it to 25hz.
Teach and Feed your pets to make them cleverer ! New gadget.
“A smart WiFi-connected device your pet can use. Automatically entertain and educate your dog, even when they’re home alone.”
CleverPet – A Console that Teaches and Feeds Your Dog All Day
LEAVING YOUR BEST FRIEND ALONE JUST GOT A LITTLE LESS STRESSFUL
When dogs are left alone at home, they can get bored, leading to separation anxiety and costly destructive behavior.
- All day interaction thanks to games that adapt
- Arrive home to a dog that’s been challenged and active
- Join the community that’s transforming pet parenting
NEVER BORED AGAIN
CleverPet engages your dog with light, sound, and touch, using their own food to motivate them. As your dog learns, CleverPet is always adapting so it’s never too easy or too hard. And you can stay connected wherever you are through the CleverPet app.
CleverPet completely transforms your pet’s experience of being home alone. It’s a device that feeds your dog while she engages with it and learns. And we even make it easy for you keep track of when your pet plays and eats.
CleverPet is a learning console that engages and teaches your dog. It uses scientifically proven techniques to offer interactions that adapt to individual dogs’ needs. These interactions grow more challenging as your dog learns, and can take place even when you can’t be home. Many dogs left alone at home are bored and unengaged, which can lead to separation anxiety and costly destructive behavior. With CleverPet, your dog is busy, engaged, and challenged at her learning level—automatically. A busy dog is a happy dog, and a busy, happy dog has no time for negative behavior.
The CleverPet uses cutting-edge algorithms based on behavioral science to reward your dog when she learns something new. The device has three sensitive touch pads, which light up interactively and are designed for your dog’s nose or paw. Your pet will win food for touching the pads on the device. CleverPet’s software is constantly adapting to your pet, and you can always see how she is doing in real time.
Once your dog masters the third level, she is ready for the bigger challenges that CleverPet can provide. Your dog will have a huge variety of interactive games to try out. Imagine “Lumosity for dogs.” And because the CleverPet adjusts levels in real time, based on your pet’s performance, it’s never too easy or too hard.
These are just a few of the level 4+ games you could teach your dog … what other games could you teach your pet?
The best part is that all
of this happens while you’re out of the house. Instead of anxiously waiting for family members to come back, your dog is busy playing, learning, and eating gradually over the course of the day.
WAIT, REALLY?!
Yes. With CleverPet, you can give your dog a better day at home. When you’re not there, your dog can still be engaged, entertained, and challenged. The scientific principles behind CleverPet have been around for over a century. CleverPet could never replace you, but it picks up where you leave off. CleverPet can go all day, seven days a week. It doesn’t
leave for work, it’s never too
tired to play, and it won’t let
insanely adorable cuteness
interfere with the consistency of its rewards. When your pet wants to engage, the CleverPet is there.
Great PI/PX (pet interface/pet experience) is at the core of CleverPet’s design.
Designed for dogs. Durable rubber touch pads; low center of gravity to prevent tipping; no “bitable” parts; a microphone for sensing dog barks.
Tuned to dogs’ senses. CleverPet is built to suit natural behaviors (for example pawing, nosing, and digging), and includes lights and sounds designed for your pet’s different abilities to see and hear.
Smart dog bowl. CleverPet can replace your dog’s food bowl. It holds enough food to feed most dogs until you get home. It’s compatible with a wide range of dry food sizes.
Completely autonomous. Sit back and let the algorithms do their thing. Fill the CleverPet with food, turn it on, and leave, knowing your dog is having fun and learning while you’re away.
Always ready. Pet interactions can happen all day, whether or not you’re home.
Remote monitoring. See your pet’s progress in real time through our website and app, and view summaries of your dog’s learning over time.
Take it slow. Feeds your dog slowly, a few pieces of food at a time.
Never boring. Adapts to your dog’s responses continuously to keep your pet challenged.
WiFi-connected. It can connect to other smart devices. Just imagine the possibilities!
Spark-powered. Hack much? It’s Arduino-compatible. Write your own custom code. We provide a RESTful API.
A note from CleverPet Chief Dog Trainer Graham Bloem
As a professional dog trainer, I see every day what can happen when energetic, high-drive dogs are left alone at home. Dogs are a working species, and many breeds have evolved to run for more than six hours a day. When I think about the potential of CleverPet, my mind immediately goes to the 3-5 million dogs that are euthanized every year. Many of these dogs have bad behavior that’s a direct result of the drive that builds up in them over the course of the day. It leads to a cycle: dog is frustrated, dog damages the furniture, dog gets punished, dog gets more frustrated.
With CleverPet, we can be proactive about addressing dogs’ needs to be engaged throughout the day. With stimulating games we’re directing their energy in appropriate directions, and even teaching them new things.
brain-perks 