Speaker 1: From how Stuff Works dot com. This is the stuff
Speaker 1: of Life. Welcome to the Stuff of Life. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Julie Douglas. Imagine yourself as a newly hatched cicada, living
Speaker 1: deep in the soil and the vast crisscrossing tree roots.
Speaker 1: You drain the network of tree sap until you become
Speaker 1: plumper and plumper, and each year that passes, there's a
Speaker 1: mounting sense that one day the temperature will be just
Speaker 1: so and you will know it's time to dig your
Speaker 1: way to the surface. For seventeen years, you toil under
Speaker 1: the earth for one reason, and one reason only, to
Speaker 1: come to the surface and mate to find the one
Speaker 1: who will respond to your finely tuned notes, the one
Speaker 1: who will make her way through a thicket of a
Speaker 1: thousand other songs to you and only you. In this episode,
Speaker 1: we turned to nature, to the songs that are all
Speaker 1: around us. We take a trip to Bernbank Museum in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: Georgia for the exhibit Wild Music, and we eavesdrop on
Speaker 1: humans in animals in communication. The High Elephant Orchestra to
Speaker 1: me is a perfect example of non music being built
Speaker 1: as music, and we talked to John P. S Waddle
Speaker 1: about his study on the Eastern bluebirds, birdsong increasingly smothered
Speaker 1: by noise pollution. I try to see the world as
Speaker 1: much as I can through the senses of the animals
Speaker 1: that I study, and that's largely birds. So I think about, well,
Speaker 1: how are the birds being affected by this at this time?
Speaker 1: But first human bird song? That's rus song from the
Speaker 1: movie The Hunger Games, a four note tune, at times
Speaker 1: signaling goodbye to loved ones and at others showing support
Speaker 1: for the revolution. But this is a fictional whistle. On
Speaker 1: the coast of Turkey, in the small mountain village of Kaskoy,
Speaker 1: people use bird like whistles to communicate across steep hills.
Speaker 1: The following whistle conversation is addressed to a man named
Speaker 1: yak Up, and it's about how his tea is ready
Speaker 1: and his sister will be home soon. He replies that
Speaker 1: he's cutting hay and will be there in a moment. Amazingly,
Speaker 1: these whistles, sprinkled among similar sounding bird calls, allow for
Speaker 1: nuanced information to be transmitted. It's pure bio mimicry. Humans
Speaker 1: impersonating nature, and while we move further and further away
Speaker 1: from nature as a model to emulate. We can find
Speaker 1: its auditory influence everywhere, even in horror movies. Daniel Bloomstein,
Speaker 1: an expert in animal distress calls, made this connection in
Speaker 1: his study, finding that nonlinear sounds like the blown out
Speaker 1: vocalizations of an animal scream elicit a biologically ingreamed response
Speaker 1: to them from us, and that horror movies often weave
Speaker 1: animal screams into their soundtracks. That's the distress call of
Speaker 1: the baby marmoset a large ground squirrel. It shares a
Speaker 1: similarity with an iconic moment in a certain movie. These
Speaker 1: are manic pieces of noise, effective tools for manipulating our
Speaker 1: fear at a primal level. Raising the hackles of our
Speaker 1: alarm systems that were deeply rooted symbolically and otherwise with
Speaker 1: the sounds of nature. Is also evident in the exhibit
Speaker 1: Wild Music at firm Bank Museum. When you enter the
Speaker 1: Wild Music exhibit, you're met with a siren call from
Speaker 1: the ocean. That's the mink at whale. We used to
Speaker 1: think of the ocean as containing vast silence, but underwater
Speaker 1: microphones called hydrophones have revealed a world of sound, snapping shrimp, farting, fish,
Speaker 1: underwater earthquakes, and of course other worldly whale songs. But
Speaker 1: that we identify these tones as songs in the first
Speaker 1: place is a thorny issue, as the exhibit explores through
Speaker 1: three different perspectives. The first is from Steve Nowiki, the
Speaker 1: dean of Natural Sciences at Duke University and a longtime
Speaker 1: student of bird song. I think the question what is
Speaker 1: music is something that we all have to answer for ourselves,
Speaker 1: because the word music is referring to an aesthetic ideal.
Speaker 1: Some of us might define that quite narrowly. If we
Speaker 1: were interested only in, say, classical music, then we'd throw
Speaker 1: out Stravinsky and and certainly John Cage modern rap in
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of other popular music. Others of us
Speaker 1: would define music is anything that triggers our own personal
Speaker 1: aesthetic response. I listen to bird songs a lot, and
Speaker 1: I consider that a kind of natural music, or a
Speaker 1: wild music. I'm willing to put the word wild or
Speaker 1: natural in front of that, because I understand that musicians
Speaker 1: would maybe take exception to broadening it that much. But
Speaker 1: when I'm out in a marsh at dawn and the
Speaker 1: sun is just rising, the world around me is filled
Speaker 1: with a symphony of sounds, and that marsh Nowiki is
Speaker 1: picking out a melody, and in that melody emotion, it
Speaker 1: all comes together for me in a very esthetically overwhelming package,
Speaker 1: and I consider that a kind of natural music. It
Speaker 1: gives me a kind of emotional response that is in
Speaker 1: the same vein as the response I might get from
Speaker 1: listening to Beethoven's Ode for Joy. Nowiki also points out
Speaker 1: that while most people would consider bird song as musical,
Speaker 1: not all would say that it is actually music. Something
Speaker 1: musicologist Elizabeth Tolbert of Johns Hopkins University isolates in the
Speaker 1: Thai Elephant Orchestra on the elephants, if I had been
Speaker 1: trained to play, I guess or at least make sounds
Speaker 1: with Thai traditional instruments. And when you hear it not
Speaker 1: knowing that it's elephants making the music, it sounds one way.
Speaker 1: And when you hear it knowing that it is elephants
Speaker 1: making this music, it sounds another way. And I think
Speaker 1: that when you hear it within the expectation of it
Speaker 1: being music, in a way, it is music at that
Speaker 1: point because a human has recorded it and presented it
Speaker 1: as music. But if you think of it in terms
Speaker 1: of what the elephants are trying to do. It's not
Speaker 1: music in that sense, And I think this shows you
Speaker 1: how impossible it is to hear a sound. Just as
Speaker 1: pure sound, there's always some sort of interpretation going on
Speaker 1: in the background. Tuna McIntyre, a Central Yupick Eskimo artist,
Speaker 1: echoes this idea that it comes down to us as
Speaker 1: the interpreters. Music is a search. In my estimation, what
Speaker 1: we're trying to say is it's a search for emotion.
Speaker 1: That's why from ancient times we call it yokun. The
Speaker 1: reason for looking or searching a duck is the act
Speaker 1: of singing. It essentially means you dawn on your search
Speaker 1: your music. You put it on, almost like a piece
Speaker 1: of clothing. So do animals truly make music? For Tolbert,
Speaker 1: it's not likely these sounds can be interpreted as if
Speaker 1: they were made by people or made by some kind
Speaker 1: of supernatural beings that have human like intentions and thoughts.
Speaker 1: But we shouldn't attribute that kind of thought process to
Speaker 1: a bird that is making these sounds. But for McIntyre,
Speaker 1: animal song and our interpretation of it are one and
Speaker 1: the same. Well, take the raven. The raven is one
Speaker 1: of our most important birds in our ancient and even
Speaker 1: today's mythology, and we sing his songs, songs that are
Speaker 1: born of him. We vocalize and we sing some other
Speaker 1: humans and understand what he's singing about. Chicken dah, a
Speaker 1: chicken dah, A chicken kicking chick. That's one of those
Speaker 1: little diddies that we sing of the raven when he's
Speaker 1: jumping about and you know, just being sure of himself
Speaker 1: and picking little leaves or grass from the ground. When
Speaker 1: animals sing, they aspire through our abilities to interpret music, song,
Speaker 1: or dance. In essence, they sing through us. We become
Speaker 1: the interpreters. We become the vehicle of these aspirations for
Speaker 1: the animal kingdom. It's almost like we're doing this in
Speaker 1: concert together, and after all, we all exist in the
Speaker 1: universe together. It's impossible to know if animals have the
Speaker 1: same kind of search for emotional meaning and song that
Speaker 1: we do, but it is possible to demonstrate that they
Speaker 1: have a very visceral response to these melodies. You can
Speaker 1: show that a female birds reproductive system will change when
Speaker 1: she hears a male birds song. It actually stimulates her
Speaker 1: reproductive system, It changes her hormonal profile and will lead
Speaker 1: her to become more likely to build a nest and
Speaker 1: lay eggs and so forth. You can show that um,
Speaker 1: a male song sparrow, for example, that here's another song,
Speaker 1: Sparrow's song, well within a few minutes have a higher
Speaker 1: level of testosterone in its bloodstream and will become correspondingly
Speaker 1: more agressive. So those are different kinds of responses than
Speaker 1: the responses that I would feel, say, to a Beethoven symphony,
Speaker 1: I mean, I hope my testosterone level doesn't rise in
Speaker 1: response to, say, arousing the scared. So these discussions about
Speaker 1: music and animals and the way we view the matter
Speaker 1: because behind these songs are warnings, invitations, the buzzing of life.
Speaker 1: But this buzzing, this background to our city parks, are
Speaker 1: streets in our backyards is changing. We're seeing extinctions accelerate
Speaker 1: at a very rapid pace, and geologists telling us that
Speaker 1: the rate of extinction currently is perhaps even outside the
Speaker 1: rate of any mass extinction event the planets ever experienced.
Speaker 1: What people are going to experience in terms of their
Speaker 1: own sort of connections with nature are going to be
Speaker 1: fundamentally different than when I was a That's John Peace Waddle,
Speaker 1: a professor at the College of William and Mary, a
Speaker 1: biologist who studies bird communication. I was one of those
Speaker 1: kids who, from a very young age actually knew what
Speaker 1: they wanted to do. Even as a six seven eight
Speaker 1: year old, I was fascinated by animals. On his way
Speaker 1: to elementary school, Swallowwood passed by the house of Sir
Speaker 1: David Attenborough. He was one of my heroes just from
Speaker 1: a very young age, and I grew up watching his
Speaker 1: programs all the time, and I just became fascinated by
Speaker 1: what animals do. To persuade females that come close and
Speaker 1: admire his poos, he sings the most complex song he
Speaker 1: can manage, and he does that by copying the songs
Speaker 1: of all the other birds he has around him, such
Speaker 1: as the Kukamara. Birds aren't just sensitive to the noises
Speaker 1: around them, but to the changing conditions as well, so
Speaker 1: much so that we have the term canary in a
Speaker 1: coal mine to describe their ability to suss out danger
Speaker 1: before humans do. Birds are certainly sent an alls for
Speaker 1: a lot of ecological change because birds are very dynamic
Speaker 1: within a lot of ecosystems. They are both prey and
Speaker 1: predators within a lot of ecosystems, and so if something
Speaker 1: happens within that environment, birds are often a fairly sensitive
Speaker 1: indicator of something going wrong, and we've seen shifts in
Speaker 1: bird populations substantially. Just in the last couple of decades.
Speaker 1: There have been studies about birds altering the way they
Speaker 1: sing a relative to their environment. For instance, birds in
Speaker 1: the cities sing differently than birds in the country because
Speaker 1: of background noise. But Swallow and his colleagues wanted to
Speaker 1: know how this was affecting the bird's behaviors, and they
Speaker 1: did this by studying eastern bluebirds and exposing them to
Speaker 1: different noise levels. Not only did they find that the
Speaker 1: birds could definitely adjust their songs, but in some instances,
Speaker 1: the birds had to shout to be heard. Birds can
Speaker 1: change the way they saying very quickly and very dynamically,
Speaker 1: so really just as humans do. If you've found yourself
Speaker 1: in a noisy situation, you start shouting, but as you shout,
Speaker 1: the pitch of your voice also goes up, and that's
Speaker 1: exactly what bluebirds do as well. In the study, the
Speaker 1: implications of sound pollution are starkly evident in the noisest
Speaker 1: situations among the birds that we studied. The birds who
Speaker 1: were trying to breed in the noises conditions have far
Speaker 1: fewer babies than the birds that were breeding in the
Speaker 1: quieter conditions, even though they were changing their songs, so
Speaker 1: that comes at a cost. They're producing fewer babies, and
Speaker 1: so there would be a fitness deficit for living in
Speaker 1: those noisiest conditions. Okay, to bring it down human terms,
Speaker 1: imagine trying to settle down and have a family all
Speaker 1: in one night. Had allowed bar where you're trying to
Speaker 1: shout over the music to make a connection. Well, we
Speaker 1: humans can leave the bar and seek the refuge of
Speaker 1: our apartments. Bird habitats are the bar. There's no escaping
Speaker 1: the thumping noise. And it's worth noting that in the study,
Speaker 1: Swaddle in his colleagues weren't even exposing the birds to
Speaker 1: the worst of noise pollution. The noises that we recorded
Speaker 1: here in the context of what the bluebirds had to
Speaker 1: sing over, were nowhere near as loud as construction or
Speaker 1: a chainsaw. This is largely road traffic, and you know
Speaker 1: a fair distance from the roads to as well. So
Speaker 1: this is more akin to say the sound of a
Speaker 1: washing machine while you're in the room next door, or
Speaker 1: something like that. It's not a really loud song. Perhaps
Speaker 1: it's like the sound that's kind of noise that you
Speaker 1: might experience if someone has the TV on and you're
Speaker 1: trying to have a conversation. Okay, so the bird population decreases,
Speaker 1: what's the harm Because the birds are connected to what
Speaker 1: eats them and what they eat, and they also disperse seeds,
Speaker 1: it also changes lots of other parts of the ecosystem
Speaker 1: as well. To the point of the even changes the
Speaker 1: plants that are in the area, because the birds interact
Speaker 1: with the plants, either by spreading their seeds or by
Speaker 1: eating things that eat the plants, and so on. So
Speaker 1: the effects of noise on conservation biology are really quite
Speaker 1: profound and quite unexpected to most people who just think
Speaker 1: it might be a nuisance, But it's really detrimentally affecting
Speaker 1: lots of different types of organisms. Swaddle study, which is
Speaker 1: just a sliver of an example of all the ways
Speaker 1: human activity is altering nature, demonstrate something called the cascade effect.
Speaker 1: The reduction of one species can have dreadful effects that
Speaker 1: spiral out and affect other animals and even the landscape itself.
Speaker 1: These animals and biodiversity is important to us as a society,
Speaker 1: and we're actually losing something substantial by losing biodiversity, And
Speaker 1: it's another part of this whole argument about why people
Speaker 1: should be more concerned about nature, more connected to nature.
Speaker 1: Nature gave us the first songs, the patterns and melodies
Speaker 1: that we replicate in instruments and our own voices. The
Speaker 1: first songs that transcended the limits of a spoken word language,
Speaker 1: giving us the ability to communicate powerful emotions immediately, The
Speaker 1: first songs that gave people a sense of unity, and
Speaker 1: the first songs we used as a basis for our
Speaker 1: own ritual and social behaviors, including courtship. The question is
Speaker 1: whether these first songs will persist or whether they'll continue
Speaker 1: to recede into the background of our own noise. Thank
Speaker 1: you to Firm Bank Museum, which is currently exhibiting Wild Music.
Speaker 1: Wild Music is a production of the Association of Science
Speaker 1: Technology Centers, the Science Museum of Minnesota, and the University
Speaker 1: of North Carolina at Greensboro School of Music, with major
Speaker 1: funding from the National Science Foundation and additional support from
Speaker 1: the Harmon International and ec Foundation of America. Thank you
Speaker 1: to John Swaddle for talking to us about his work
Speaker 1: with Eastern bluebirds. The Stuff of Life is written and
Speaker 1: co produced by me Julie Douglas. Original music and sound
Speaker 1: design is by co producer Noel Brown. Editorial oversight is
Speaker 1: provided by Head of production Jerry Rowland. In the next episode,
Speaker 1: which wraps up season one of the Stuff of Life,
Speaker 1: we look at how life is just a game, gets
Speaker 1: down to defining who you are, right and like gamification
Speaker 1: gives you metrics to help you to define who you are,
Speaker 1: and we like to think that based on merit, that's
Speaker 1: how we accelerate and level up. If you like what
Speaker 1: we do here, visit us on Facebook and Twitter. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, email us your season two episodes. Suggestions at
Speaker 1: The Stuff of Life at how staff works dot com.