The world is filled with sounds, some of which are noisy while others are melodious. Let’s have a look at how scientists are harnessing sound energy to solve some of nature’s most tedious puzzles:

A sound recording device, called the acoustic recorder, has the ability to capture sounds and echolocations of birds, frogs, bats and marine animals. It has given birth to a new field of science, called the ecoacoustics, or the bioacoustics. This is revolutionizing conservation and can greatly help scientists in assessing the health of ecosystems and how human actions impact and interact with diverse ecosystems.

Here’s how scientists are gathering and utilizing sound data to help animal conservation:

kolibri5/Pixabay. Endangered elephant sounds are recorded and analyzed to help conserve them.

Listening To The Sounds Of Endangered African elephants

Elephants are an amazing creation of God, but did you know that the sound they produce to communicate with each other is below the human hearing range? They produce infrasonic vocalizations, which can travel upto 300 kilometers. Cornell University initiated an Elephant Listening Project which makes use of these infrared waves to eavesdrop and save endangered African elephants.

These forest elephants have Central Africa as their natural habitat, and their population is decreasing at an alarming rate. Conversationalists try to monitor their movement and sounds by recording the infrasounds and running them through a computer to sift through elephant sounds to observe how they react to poaching activities and other oil exploration activities nearby.

Matthew Guay/Unsplash. The elusive night parrot can be tracked and detected using their sound footprints.

Looking For Night Parrots In The Australian Desert

The Night Parrots of the Australian Desert, referred to as a ‘dumpy’ by bird enthusiasts, are the holy grail of birds found in Australia. They are highly elusive creatures and had been missing for the better part of the past century. Their carcasses kept being discovered in the last century, and it was only in the early 2000s that scientists were able to observe them alive. The first Night Parrot caught alive in recent times was in 2015 in Queensland.

Lately, however, these birds are quickly increasing their population and they can now be found in Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland. In order to monitor their movement in an arid desert setting, where they can hide and not be seen for a century, scientists made use of acoustic recorders to confirm their presence and monitor their population numbers.

M71/Pixabay. Scientists are recording and observing changes in animal sounds as developing countries cut down forests to give to logging.

Saving Tropical Forests In Borneo

Development and forest conservation can go hand in hand, as The Nature Conservancy is helping Indonesia to decide which parts of the forest to give to logging or for intense agricultural purposes and which parts to save, all through studying biodiversity by the help of sound data.

Measuring Logging’s Impact on Borneo’s Biodiversity

Using large amounts of sound data collected in different land-use types can also pinpoint how forest logging changes the composition of a species living in the area.

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